Tales From the Wasteland: Black As Oil
by SickleYield
Summary: The best laid plans of research scientists often go awry. The awkward hybrid is on her own, and she'll need some sort of protection besides her family of robots. Good thing she has two thousand caps to spend. Now complete!
1. Chapter 1

Tales from the Wasteland: Black as Oil

Author's Notes on Lore

This is likely to be dull for those of you not interested specifically in the lore of the Fallout games and Fallout 3 in particular, so you may want to skip down to Chapter 1. Do please read this before leaving a comment arguing with my stated information about the Capital Wasteland, aliens, Charon, Ghouls, androids, or other parts of the Fallout universe.

Lore stated here will be from the unmodified Fallout 3 PC game. I use many mods, but I try not to include them in fanfics. At this time I do not play any of the DLCs, but I'll try not to miss any important lore from them (thanks to the Vault Wiki). I definitely welcome corrections when I do miss things that are stated explicitly in the game or on the Wiki.

**Here are some things pertinent to this story which I understand to be true about the Fallout world, based on FO3 gameplay and the Wiki:**

-Ghouls may or may not live to great age depending on exactly how their DNA has been affected by radiation; similarly, Ghouls can come into existence merely by radiation exposure if they have the right genetics. (Contrary to how ordinary people react to strong radiation exposure, which is by dying horribly as in our world/real life.)

-Ghouls are not harmed by radiation; in fact, they heal faster when exposed to it.

-In the unmodified game, Charon stands head and shoulders taller than most other NPCs. He is a big fellow.

-Charon's contract can be purchased from Ahzrukhal for 2000 caps (or by doing a quest which will not be used in this story), and what he does right after his contract is purchased in this story is canonical.

-Charon has a tendency to prefer his combat knife or other melee weapons to ranged weapons even when instructed not to use them. (Both noted on Wiki and observed during gameplay.) He also seems to strongly prefer the flamer to his shotgun despite its infinite durability and ammo. He is expert in sneak and explosives.

-Charon was brainwashed as a child (it is not specified how) and is blindly obedient to the holder of his contract. The contract can be invalidated by the contract holder attacking Charon or by their sale/gift of it to someone else, not by anything less (if fired he will state that the player still holds his contract).

-Charon can act on his own initiative in combat situations, and in fact will attack definite hostiles without orders to do so.

Aliens/Extraterrestrials and Recon Craft Theta:

-Recon Craft Theta is crashed/embedded in the ground in the Northern part of the map in FO3. It has a shattered cockpit with green blood dripping inside it and a dead alien who appears to have been thrown clear. There is higher-than-normal background radiation around the craft, large creatures may spawn near it (including yao guai or deathclaws), and a radio signal can be picked up near it (the actual signal is in fact a joke played backwards, but for purposes of the story I will pretend it's in an alien tongue).

-Physical appearance of the aliens, which my main OC will partly share. Green blood is also found on the alien's helmet and in the cockpit.

-There is no statement as to whether they breathe oxygen (the crashed alien has a helmet on), but I understand there will be a DLC in which the player will be on an alien spacecraft, so I'm hoping that means that they do.

-The alien blaster uses alien power cells, loads from the side, does electrical damage, and is one of the game's more powerful weapons because of its high rate of critical hits. There is one with the dead alien at Recon Craft Theta, along with a few power cells. Other power cells are located in a clearing not far off.

Androids:

-Androids exist in the FO3 universe and are built/created in the Commonwealth.

-Those shown in the game are male (there are only two canonically).

-More advanced androids can eat, sleep, digest, bleed red, and grow hair - they really cannot be visually distinguished from humans. (That last is observational/Wiki rather than stated game canon.)

**Here are the things I'll be deducing or making up:**

-The Vault Dweller was an ordinary human male. He performed only the main sequence of quests and is dead at the time of this story, having successfully accomplished Project Purity without being saved by the sequence of events that happens in the Broken Steel DLC. See _TFW: Thistle _for more information.

-In the game, the player does not have the option to tell Charon to kill or hurt people who are not immediately hostile, but it's canonical that this can be done (per statements of Ahzrukhal). I take this to mean that he will do _absolutely anything_ when told _except _harm himself physically.

-Charon may or may not have it together mentally. He often talks to himself, occasionally as if he were having a conversation ("Over here. Where? Keep firing!"). Whatever mental problems he has don't affect his ability to follow instructions nor to converse coherently with the player when addressed.

-Some of his personality, way of thinking, etc., will be made up by me. I'll try to be true to how he seems in the game, but no two people will experience/interpret the character exactly the same way, so he probably won't be the same in my head as yours.

-Charon's actions right after the player purchases his contract appear to indicate he's capable of some initiative. I will probably run with this.

-Anything I say about Charon's raising or history will be made up, since we don't have a canon source for that - other than Ahzrukhal's vague statements that he was brainwashed as a child and that he ended up in Ahzrukhal's employ due to his own choices. I will assume that this process began in early childhood and continued for some time, because that's about the only explanation for his continuing these behaviors as an adult (even then it's unlikely).

-It's not stated how old Charon is or if he has Hayflick immortality.

-At the time I'm beginning this story, the Mother Ship Zeta DLC is not out yet. I may end up disagreeing with things it says about the aliens; I will fix on the fly if possible. If not, I'll just live with being wrong.

-Nothing in this story is related to Geonox's alien hybrid race mod, which is a strapping male-only race with quite an attractive alien head mesh but normal human anatomy otherwise. (See notes on sexes below.)

-Since the aliens bleed green, I could assume them to have a copper base (like Star Trek's Vulcans) or an iron-hemolymph-base (like terrestrial arthropods) for their blood chemistry. I'm going with hemolymph because it would be more human-compatible biologically and there is real-world precedent for it.

-Similarly, I will assume them to have double-stranded DNA and sexes somewhat analogous to ours (if lacking much visible dimorphism). The vast majority of macroorganisms on our planet have two sexes, including many plants. It's nice and simple physically, and it's useful in terms of genetic exchange for increased adaptability in offspring. Interesting as it is to imagine alien species with three and more sexes which are all needed for reproduction, it's just not very probable that a species would develop that way without quickly going extinct. Having just one sex, on the other hand, doesn't allow much adaptability against predation, environmental change and disease. This is why, of all our planet's wacky sexual variations, most of them are male and female at some point - whether it's male and female alternating with parthenogenetic female (aphids and water fleas), disexual male and female alternating with asexual self-cloning (many plants), female changing to male over the life cycle (some fish), or whatever.

-Anything stated about their language, culture or other biology will be made up by me. The things I'm assuming about their senses are not canonical that I know of, but are similar to elements that are often part of the cultural lore of Roswell grays (which they resemble).

-I assume the aliens to be less vulnerable to radiation than humans, based on the radiation found around the crashed spacecraft.

-I assume that not all androids are as advanced and humanlike as Harkness and, to a lesser extent, Armitage. After all, Harkness is designed for a special purpose; it would be to the makers' advantage not to make ALL their androids so easily able to "out-human the humans."

-Since his number is A3-21, I assume this to be a series designation and quality level. Accordingly, I assume "lesser" androids would belong to the B, C, etc. series. The other numbers then indicate production runs and subtypes (hence B2-09 later on).

-Further, I assume that there are at least a few non-squishy parts to the androids. Harkness's memory wipe and redo certainly would not be possible on a normal human brain. Also cf. the "android component" which Victoria from the Railroad will give to the player as proof of Harkness's "death."

-I assume female androids exist and, like male androids, are specialized to various tasks. This is reasonable if we assume Commonwealth scientists are of both sexes and that both sexes have equal power over decision making processes involving the creation of androids.

Original Characters and locations:

-The underground lab locale is made up. See the "Those!" quest line for a smaller precedent.

-Xen (pronounced "Zen") is an OC, and her personality and biology is a complete invention. I have no idea if she is possible in canon, but the Fallout universe is full of weird hybrids and genetic remixes. I've assumed her psychology to be mostly human (otherwise it'd be a bit hard for me to write about her).

-Xen's creators and their robots are all OCs.

-Bell is an OC and her character type is not exactly like a default one (how will become clear).

-There may be other OCs in the story as well. Canon characters will undoubtedly be present and I will try to be accurate with them as much as possible; however, where information is limited, I will feel free to improvise.

**-ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CHARON'S PSYCHOLOGY AFTER CH. 13**: Based on the events of the game, Charon is not psychotic. That is, he is able to accurately perceive and interact with his surroundings, because otherwise it would not be possible for him to closely follow instructions and remain passive at other times.

However, his behavior is consistent with hearing voices. He sometimes speaks as if to someone besides himself or the player character. I did some research on this via Wikipedia and discovered the Hearing Voices Movement, whose research data indicates that something like half of people who hear voices experience them as benign and are able to function in an ordinary way. They are not paranoid, violent, or homeless. These are the people whose voices don't constantly put them down or order them around, so they are not a source of constant internal conflict. Many of these people, even those with benign voices, began to hear them after an early trauma (there's a high correlation with physical and/or sexual abuse as a child). These are not multiple personalities as the media has presented them. These are not people experiencing themselves as one person one minute and someone else the next, or trapped in an interior world of battling personalities. They identify themselves as the same individual they have always been, and the voices as external to themselves. If anything, I'm being less realistic by suggesting that the voices can sometimes "borrow" Charon's voice (required by the fact that he asks and answers himself sometimes, as in "Over here! Where??").

I think it's reasonable to suppose Charon might have such an experience resulting from the extreme trauma of his early conditioning. Since voices can function as a coping mechanism rather than an additional trauma, and he could experience them while still being able to understand and follow orders, this makes the most sense to me.

Thanks for your patience, and on with the show.

_A/N: Yep, I still like my author's notes. It's a sickness._

_Most of this takes place concurrent to and shortly after the events of TFW: Thistle, with which it shares a miniverse. If you wonder why the characters talk about a cure for Ghoulhood, you may want to read that one first, but it won't be really important otherwise. _

1

Twenty years before Project Purity, two scientists, four robots, and enough tools and equipment to equip a small biomechanics laboratory left Raven Rock.

This was by no means a usual circumstance. Benevolent as the regime of John Henry Eden might be, it was not customary for Enclave-trained personnel to depart quite so informally, particularly carrying millions of caps' worth of equipment. Quite the contrary. The two scientists, whom we will call by their full and richly earned titles of Drs. Sherman Montalban and Jessica Graber, spent quite some time researching, planning and collecting. The covert programming of a Vertibird transport with an AI sophisticated enough to fly itself and secure enough to follow only the instructions of Dr. Montalban was a project of several years all on its own.

Faking the authorization to take the bird out, armed to the teeth and loaded down with everything but the acid-proof porcelain sink (it wouldn't fit), was child's play by comparison. It was well over 48 hours before anyone realized something untoward had taken place. By then it was far, far too late.

Drs. Montalban and Graber were well aware that the Vertibird could eventually be traced, so they didn't waste much time at the crash site East of Raven Rock. They tracked the alien signal to its source, sent their specially modified Mister Handy unit out to retrieve the single sad little corpse, and sped off to the South and the Capitol.

They weren't so foolish as to fly over the Mall, of course. Their research had been quite thorough, involving the creative acquisition of a great deal of surveillance footage, and they both had a fairly good idea of the abrupt end to which a rocket launcher held by a super mutant could bring their venture. The bird dipped and swooped between the gutted remains of tall buildings, using its full sensor suite to look for a suitable power source. They finally found it in the Metro station under Crystal Plaza.

The Plaza was occupied. Raiders had set up a squatter's camp there, lolling about behind their crude barriers of wood and canvas and wire. The Vertibird soon took care of this problem, although Dr. Graber felt somewhat inconvenienced by the necessity of stepping over a charred corpse as she climbed out of the flyer. The four robots were sent to reconnoiter the station below. They cleaned out a few mole rats and another unsuspecting Raider who had not planned to share his cache of Jet with the others. In an hour they had found a suitable site: well-situated, susceptible of fortification, complete with functional plumbing and working generators. Once it had been a set of offices and a repair station.

It took two people and four robots surprisingly little time to transfer the Vertibird's full contents down to the site. They locked up the flyer and left it up above while they set about making their new home clean and safe. This was a frantically quick and yet a painstakingly careful process. Drs. Graber and Montalban had worked together for some time now, and they acted with and around each other and the bots with a precision that would astonish a layman.

When everything was finished, the pipes tapped and the locks repaired and the smuggled turret wired in place, Dr. Montalban transmitted his last orders to the Vertibird's AI. It was not without regret that he did it, but there was no other choice; once the Enclave had detected their absence, they would look for the flyer's enormous power signature first of all.

The Vertibird rose into the sky over what was left of Washington, D.C. It flew on its programmed course to the North and West. Merchants on their way out of Megaton took note of its passing. When it was as near equidistant from the City and Raven Rock as its navigational systems could accomplish, it went into a steep climb, stalled out, and crashed straight down into the desert landscape. The noise frightened a family of radscorpions. The fireball lit up the pitiless blue sky for a few seconds. And that was all.

The dead alien, which Dr. Graber persistently called a xenoorganism, was stripped, examined very thoroughly, and stuck into a preservative field station in the suite of rooms the two scientists (with a very typical scientific spirit of description) just called the Lab. They had several other field stations in that same room. Two were stolen from the Enclave. The rest were adapted from old Protectron docking stations by the clever hands of Dr. Montalban.

The two Enclave sentry bots were set to drag in debris and block up the tunnels immediately around the Lab as much as possible. The other two bots, the aforementioned modified Mister Handy and an equally tweaked Robobrain, remained inside the lab to assist with projects. Dr. Montalban had programmed them both with female voices and named them Tori and Bunni. This was very typical of his sense of humor.

"But did you have to make the Handy sound like a damn Californian?" said Dr. Graber. "I swear you've never heard that accent in your life except on tapes."

"I _like _that accent," said Dr. Montalban. He refused persistently to change it back.

A few weeks after that, Dr. Montalban pronounced his very first artificial womb functional and ready to go. (He started to tell Dr. Graber his plan to name it Cherri, but the look on her face and the scalpel in her hand convinced him this might be a bad idea.) By that time, Dr. Graber had a viable cell culture from the dead xenoorganism's skin cells. At first she just spliced a nucleus from one of its somatic cells into an egg from the colony of ova she had cloned from her own body.

The new conceptus failed after two cell divisions.

She tried again. This time it made it through six divisions. Then somehow a bacterium got into its container and killed every single cell. Graber's DNA and organelles had some native resistance. The xenoorganism's did not.

The third time, she used a fertilized egg and spliced the alien's DNA in chromosome by chromosome (where possible; the creature evidently possessed two more than a human being, and these had to be shoved in piecemeal). She was pleased to observe growth proceed not only through the blastocyst stage, but well up to the point where it was ready to implant into the barrel-sized interior of the artificial womb. It lasted two whole weeks before it died.

Graber and Montalban argued violently over whose fault this was, transferred the microscopic corpse into a jar of preservatives, and started over with a new nutrient solution. Graber teased apart DNA strand by strand, looking for places to shoehorn in xenoorganic additions. This time she spent a great deal more time on this part of the process. The result was a horrid little fetus that actually lived into its second trimester. It had some sort of seizure upon accidental exposure to the laboratory's ambient lighting and died hemorrhaging green-black blood into the tank.

The two scientists argued again, curtained off the room, lowered the lights, and started over.

This went on for a while. It was not until the nineteenth attempt that the fetus actually made it into the third trimester. Graber fully expected it to die the first time she opened the artificial womb's observation window, just like all the others.

This particular infant looked a bit more human than the last subject. Its skin was pale with only the slightest hint of green, it already had a tiny wisp of black hair (not unlike Dr. Montalban's), and its head was no more outsized than one would expect from a normal baby. And, instead of dying, it blinked a silver-irised eye at the light. An inner lid shot across the inside of the lens, rendering it slick and black as oil. Then the pale, wrinkled infant stuck its thumb back into its mouth, closed its perfecty ordinary outer eyelids, and went back to sleep.

"Neat trick," said Montalban. "It's actually kind of cute."

"Oh, shut up," said Graber, who could not have been happier.

Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19 continued to prosper. Drs. Graber and Montalban did hit a snag the day they removed it from the artificial womb. The synthetic placenta detached just as it was supposed to, and there was no trouble about the cord; the greenish-black hemolymph that served the infant for blood drained out of it just as it was supposed to do, and it was cut without event.

The new baby took a deep breath of the lab's dry air and promptly went into anaphylactic shock. Rapid administration of epinephrine by Dr. Graber saved its life (_her _life, in point of actual fact – Graber had been quite certain about _those _chromosomes). Dr. Montalban went out to scrounge some more metal to build new air filters for all the rooms in the Lab. Dr. Graber calculated to a nicety exactly how much blood she could extract for analysis without harm to her newest subject. It wasn't very much, but it did contain enough interesting data to keep her busy for quite some time.

Dr. Montalban was promptly assigned the task of feeding, holding, and otherwise directly caring for Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19.

"I don't want to prejudice my judgment in case we have to sacrifice it later," said Dr. Graber. "Besides, I have genetic analysis to do, and you don't. Just follow the nutritional instructions, Doctor."

"Sacrifice it?" said Dr. Montalban with some alarm, rocking the foil-wrapped infant slightly without realizing he was doing so. It cooed and played with the nearest button on his lab coat. Its tiny hands had three spatulate fingers and a thumb. "What are you talking about?"

"That's the word," said Graber patiently, "for what you do when you've finished with a laboratory subject."

"But we can find out considerably more," said Montalban. "Think what we'll learn from observing its ongoing development. The xenoorganism may have a completely different social model from ours."

"In which case, it wouldn't have imprinted so readily on _you_," Graber pointed out dryly. "Anyway, the point will probably be moot given that it's allergic to practically everything. Don't get attached to it."

"Nothing could be further from my mind, Doctor Graber," said Dr. Montalban, holding the infant a little further from his body. "I'll see if I can devise some padding for Bunni's chassis. She can watch it while _I'm_ working."


	2. Chapter 2

2

The first thing she remembered was a voice.

"There, see, Doctor?" it said. "She's trying to talk."

She worked her lips, trying to shape a word, but they wouldn't cooperate. "Dottow?" she said.

"Doctor," said the voice, sweet and infinitely patient. An arm, hard under its soft padding, adjusted its grip as it cradled her small body. She squinted into the bright lights around her, unable to focus on anything in particular.

"Doctow," she repeated firmly.

"Extraordinary!" said another voice. "That's quite advanced for three months. Dr. Graber, are you getting this?"

"Yes, of course, the recording equipment is always on," said a third voice, this one a little like the first one except that it didn't sound very interested. "Bunni, hold the subject for me."

The arm around her tightened slightly, holding her still, and then something jabbed her in the arm. She started to cry as the pain increased, and then it went away.

"Shh, shh," said the sweet voice. The arm around her adjusted itself again, and she was looking at something hard and shiny. She stopped crying, fascinated. Something pulsed vaguely behind it, but her vision was not yet capable of resolving complex shapes. "My name is Bunni," said the first voice. "Can you say Bunni?"

"Bunni!" she said. It was easier than _doctor._

The things she remembered after that mostly were not as clear. There was a lot of arguing between the two voices that called each other _Doctor. _There was frequent discomfort when one of them poked her with sharp things. She didn't like that, but crying was punishable by the laboratory lights being turned up if the higher voice was present, so she quickly learned to stay quiet.

Mostly there was Bunni. Bunni teaching her words, Bunni holding and rocking her, Bunni keeping her safe while the Doctors were away or busy. Bunni gave her shots when she had allergy attacks, brought her little toys to play with, and (she realized later) kept her from harming herself or the Lab's equipment when she started pulling herself upright at twelve months or so. She could say full sentences before she could walk. She could even say her name, although Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19 was long and hard to pronounce with her traitorous tongue and palate. Bunni called her Xen, and after a while the others began to call her that, too.

By the time she was toilet-trained at two years, she could pronounce real words and carry on a simple conversation with Bunni and Tori. She first knew Tori primarily as the fixer of her toys. She inevitably broke them with her long and awkward fingers, and then it needed Tori's specialized tiny grips to fix them again. Because she had never known anything else, it never occurred to her as odd that one of the four people in her world moved on treads and the other had four metal arms and hovered in the air. She was disappointed the first time she realized the pale, squishy thing reflected in Bunni's shining upper dome was herself, but she got used to that. After all, she could see Bunni's brain inside the dome, and it was squishy, too. She knew that was what it was, because she asked. It was a while longer before she knew what a brain _was_, but since she had no reason to believe this was not perfectly ordinary, it did not alarm her. Obviously some people's brains were visible and others' were not.

"She's doing so well, Doctor Montalban," she heard Bunni say one day while she was supposed to be asleep. She lay curled up on a cot in the darkest corner of the lab, listening. "She hasn't had an allergy attack in over a month now, and she's growing very quickly."

"Is that normal?" Dr. Montalban asked Dr. Graber.

"Its development is precocious," was the reply. "But there have been human cases like it. It could be due to the xenoorganic contribution, or it could be due to the genetic contribution of two unusually intelligent human beings. How old were _you _when you learned to read?"

"Four," said Dr. Montalban.

"So we'll keep it around that long and see if it can learn to read. Assuming it keeps gaining immune function, that is. But after that we'll really have to consider ending this phase. It could be dangerous."

"Dangerous to you and me?" said Dr. Montalban. "Surely not. Xen is physically smaller and weaker than a human child of the same age. And I've programmed Bunni never to let her – it - out of her sight. It'll never be unsupervised for an instant."

"But it's _not _a human child," said Dr. Graber sharply. "Try to remember that. It already has unusually advanced visual perception. It could become venomous. It could develop some sort of psychic abilities. We don't know."

"And we _won't _know, if you sacrifice it before we get a chance to find out," said Dr. Montalban patiently. "Isn't that why we started this project in the first place? To learn about them?"

"Well, all right," said Dr. Graber. "But after that we have to start another specimen. We need a larger sample size, and we don't have the resources to keep track of more than one at a time."

The next time she was alone with Bunni, Xen asked her what _sacrifice _meant.

"That's what happens to experimental subjects when the Doctors are finished with them, Xen," said Bunni. "They die. Before we moved here to the Lab, Dr. Graber sacrificed a lot of rats."

"What's a rat?" asked Xen.

"Come to the terminal, and I'll show you a picture," said Bunni. One of her long accordion-pleated arms snaked out to manipulate the keyboard. "There."

"How does it happen?" asked Xen, looking at the picture of a furry whiskered thing in a cage.

"An overdose of an anesthetic," said Bunni. "They just go to sleep and don't wake up again."

"Does it hurt?" asked Xen.

"No, Dear," said Bunni. "It doesn't hurt."

"I don't want them to do that to me," said Xen. Bunni draped her other long arm around Xen's two-year-old shoulders. Xen held the thinly padded metal manipulator at the end as tightly as she could.

"I don't, either. Let's hope they don't, Xen."

"What will happen to me afterwards?" asked Xen.

"You should show her the field stations," said Tori, bobbing up behind them. She rotated until she could stare down at Xen with one of the three sensors on her round central unit. "If we're gonna be teaching her eschatology."

"You are overprogrammed," said Bunni in her calm, flat voice. "I've always said so."

"Only 'cause you're jealous that my AI is so much better," said Tori. "Better hurry up. They'll be done in the main room in twenty minutes, and you don't want them to see you."

"What's eschatology?" said Xen, sliding off the chair. "And I want to see."

"Well, all right," said Bunni, with a readiness that would have quite startled Dr. Montalban. "But we'll have to hurry."

"All right, Bunni," said Xen. She followed Bunni out of the room with the Doctors' beds, the little kitchen and the computers and through a curtain into the adjoining one. It was stacked up with supplies and machines so that there was not an inch of free wall space. In the middle of the room was a row of round patches. Each one on the floor had a matching one on the ceiling, and both had little blue lights that Xen thought were very pretty (although the brightness hurt her eyes a little, even through her second lids).

Something hovered in the air between the first pair of round patches. A faint blue glow outlined the body of a wrinkled green creature. One of its eyes was swollen shut. The other was halfway open, and Xen saw the silvery iris swimming in the black.

"What's that?" she said.

"That's where good experimental subjects go when they die," said Tori, who had followed them. "In one of these, you can stay perfectly preserved forever, and they can get blood or tissue or whatever, whenever they want it. That's your other Daddy."

"My what?" said Xen.

"Your third genetic contributor," said Bunni, using words that Xen understood. "This is where the Xenoorganism part of your name comes from. But don't you listen to Tori. He was dead when we found him."

"And if I die, they'll put me in one of those," said Xen.

"Yes," said Bunni.

"What about you?" asked Xen, turning to the next most important being in her world.

"Oh, don't you worry about that, Dear," said Bunni. "I'm a robot. We don't die the way people do. Now come back and work on your flash cards, before the Doctors realize where we've gone."

Xen returned obediently to the cards, enjoying the feeling that they shared a secret.

By the time she was three and a half, she could read entire sentences. By dint of much stammering and stuttering, she managed to conceal this fact for some time. She already had a very good memory, and the word _sacrifice _kept recurring. Eventually, Dr. Montalban caught her reading an encyclopedia entry off the terminal. They looked at each other for a minute.

"You're reading that, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes," said Xen. She had learned that lying directly very seldom worked with Dr. Montalban.

"You've been fudging the tests we give you," said Dr. Montalban. "Why?"

"I don't want to die," said Xen.

Dr. Montalban knelt down abruptly beside her chair. "Who told you you were going to die?"

"I heard you and Dr. Graber talking about it," she said. She reached for Bunni's manipulator without thinking. The robot patted her with the other one.

Dr. Montalban stared at her for a minute. He and Dr. Graber had different eyes from Xen's, even from each other's. Her irises were blue, and his were dark, dark brown. "And you understand what that means?" he said.

"You stop working," she said. "And then you get put into a field station."

"My God," said Dr. Montalban. He ran his hands through his black hair. Then he looked around quickly, checking to see if Dr. Graber was in hearing range. She was still back in the main lab room. Xen heard her sharp footsteps as she moved from counter to table. "Well, don't worry, Xen. You're obviously fully sentient. Under the circumstances, we can't possibly sacrifice you. Bunni, recognize creator vocal override."

"Creator vocal override recognized," said Bunni.

"Don't let anyone kill Xen. I include myself and Dr. Graber in that statement, do you understand?"

"Understood," said Bunni. She patted Xen on the shoulder. "Thank you, Dr. Montalban."

"Tori," said Dr. Montalban, raising his voice. "Bring me a three-eighths Marion head."

"I always carry a .25, you know," said Tori from the next room.

"I know. Get me the three-eighths." The four-armed robot drifted in from the next room with the tool a moment later. The Doctor took it, but didn't do anything with it. "Tori, recognize creator vocal override."

"Creator vocal override recognized," said Tori. "What's this all about?"

"I want you to keep Xen alive," said Dr. Montalban. "This supersedes other instructions. Is that clear?"

"Hell, yeah," said Tori. "But you might be sorry."

Xen heard approaching footsteps. Dr. Montalban hit a couple of keys on the keyboard, bringing up Xen's alphabet tutorial, just before Dr. Graber pushed the door open and came into the room. "What's going on? Is something wrong with the computer?" She looked sharply at Xen. "Was it tampering with it?"

"You know Bunni wouldn't let her do that," said Dr. Montalban. "She was working on her letters. She said the machine was making a funny noise. Looks like it was just a loose screw in the case causing some noisy vibration." He hefted the tool demonstratively.

"Are you sure? I think it may need defragged again," said Dr. Graber.

"Do I argue with you about embryonic genetics?" said Dr. Montalban.

"You'd better not," said Dr. Graber, but she smiled for just a second. "All right, Doctor, the machines are your department. It's probably a good idea not to be alone with the subject, though. I'm still concerned about the possibility of it developing psionic abilities. It has some unusual forebrain characteristics on the last scan, and I'm not sure if the unusual ocular range accounts for them - "

They lapsed into further discussion of Xen, using words which she mostly didn't know yet.


	3. Chapter 3

3

When she was four years old, Dr. Montalban and Dr. Graber remembered their agreement and decided she should learn to read. Xen had been reading very well for some months by that point, but she obediently went about "learning" the process with Bunni. Since she had to learn exactly what to do and what not to do on each upcoming test, this actually took quite a bit of work. Therefore, it was not particularly surprising that she slipped up.

"Oh, we're in for it now," said Tori, who was hovering next to the curtain to the main lab.

"Shh, don't frighten her," said Bunni, and patted Xen reassuringly. This didn't help much. She could hear the argument going on quite clearly.

"It's answering them incorrectly on purpose," said Dr. Graber. "It probably has been for months."

"Don't you think you might be overreacting?" said Dr. Montalban.

"You and I were both early developers, doctor. Did you at any point enter the words cat, dog, ball, and microorganism on a vocabulary list?" demanded Dr. Graber.

"Well, no. But that doesn't mean - "

"The experiment is compromised," said Dr. Graber sharply. "If we can't reliably determine its developmental progress, behavioral research is pointless."

"Not quite," said Dr. Montalban. "She heard you talk about sacrificing her once she'd learned to read. She's figured out that she doesn't want that to happen."

There was a long, tense pause.

"It may be sentient," said Dr. Graber. "That doesn't make it human. We have to start over."

Dr. Montalban said nothing else. Xen listened to the sound of containers clinking. She got down from the chair in front of the computer and slid around behind Bunni, clinging to the stuffed handle on the back of the cylinder of padding. Dr. Montalban had added it so that she could learn to walk. She didn't need it to hold her up any more, but she wanted something to hold onto.

"Don't worry," said Bunni. "Everything will be all right."

Xen heard the curtain slide firmly aside, and the tick-tick of Dr. Graber's shoes on the tile floor as she marched in. "There," she said, and Xen shivered as the footsteps came closer, started to travel around the curve of Bunni's cylindrical chassis.

Bunni rotated on her treads. Xen scooted with her.

"Bunni, hold the subject for me," said Dr. Graber. Xen bit her lip hard, halfway expecting a long arm to reach back and pull her gently but firmly forward, the way it had happened so many times before. But this time Bunni said,

"That's not an empty hypodermic you're holding, Dr. Graber. What is it?"

Bunni's voice sounded calm and pleasant, just like it always did, but the question seemed to stop Dr. Graber for a second. Then she said,

"Never mind that. Hold the subject for me."

"My visual apparatus is a lot better than yours, fatty," said Tori. Bunni made a sniffing sound, even though she didn't have a nose that Xen had ever seen. "Laser spectroanalysis says it's morphine. Enough to just about kill a large adult, let alone an undersized four-year-old."

"Recognize voice override," said Dr. Graber. "Do what I tell you."

"Voice override has been permanently disabled," said Bunni sweetly. Xen saw her shadow move as she raised both her arms. "Your order is in conflict with a primary directive."

"_What?"_ There was another tick-tick as she turned to Tori. "Tori, shut her off and get the subject for me."

"No way," said Tori. "You're not doing anything to Xen."

"Sherman," said Dr. Graber, using a name Xen had never heard. "What did you do?"

"I made one important change to their base imperatives, Jessica," said Dr. Montalban. "They won't obey your order or mine if it involves harm to the child."

"That is not a child," said Dr. Graber.

"Yes, she is," said Dr. Montalban. "Your child and mine. Small for her age, allergy problems, a fast learner... She's lucky that she'll probably never have my acne, with her complexion like it is, but she's definitely ours – Hey!"

There was a scuffling sound, and then Xen heard both of them breathing hard. She risked a peek around the circumference of Bunni's chassis, stifling a terrified sob. Dr. Graber stood with her hand up to Dr. Montalban's neck. Something glittered there. Dr. Montalban stood with his arms stiffly at his sides.

"I will not let you throw away our entire lives on one experimental subject," hissed Dr. Graber. "You give me the override codes or I'll press the fucking plunger."

"And then what?" asked Dr. Montalban quietly. "Anyway, it's too late. They won't listen to anything I do that contradicts a primary directive, including erase them and reupload their artificial intelligences."

"You're not getting rid of us that easily," said Tori. Xen watched her rotate in the air until one of her arms faced the two Doctors. The end irised open to show a small, black hole. Neither of the two adults seemed to notice.

"Do something, Bunni!" Xen whispered through her tears.

"I can't, Xen," said the robot. "They're not attacking us, and I can't do anything unless they do. It's in my programming."

"Mine's a little different," said Tori. There was a _pop. _Dr. Graber screamed, an incredibly loud sound in the small room, and staggered away from Dr. Montalban. Something made of shiny metal stuck out of the side of her neck. Blood spurted around it. Dr. Montalban plucked away the hypostim and threw it on the floor. Xen watched it spin toward them, glass rattling on the tile and leaving a small spiral of red as it went. It was empty.

The two bodies hit the floor at almost the same time. Dr. Graber's scream trailed away into a wheezing hiss as she jerked in place, one hand still clamped around the handle of the .25 Marion head screwdriver that Xen knew very precisely had pierced her left carotid artery. _That _was in her encyclopedia. She thought wildly of the other carotid pumping all that blood up into her brain, only to have it flow back out through the veins, and so quickly around and back up to the one that was bleeding...

"Don't pull it out, you stupid bitch," said Tori, but Dr. Graber did it anyway. More blood pulsed and flowed, spreading a puddle around the writhing body and out to Dr. Montalban. It soaked into his lab coat. Xen watched it wick up into the fabric and spread, hypnotized. Dr. Montalban didn't move.

Doctor Graber made a horrible gasping noise. A minute or so after that, she stopped twitching. It was quiet. The two robots didn't need to breathe. All Xen could hear was her own heart hammering in her ears, her own voice sobbing. A long, flexible arm snaked down to scoop her up as Bunni pivoted, belatedly hiding the sight of them from Xen's eyes.

"It's all right, Dear," said Bunni. "It's all right. No one will hurt you."

"What a mess," said Tori. "I guess I'd better initialize that first aid subroutine. Not that it's likely to do any good. We don't have a morphine antagonist."

Xen huddled against the gray padded chassis, crying quietly. Bunni held and patted her and made soft little noises as Tori bobbed over behind them, out of sight.

"Yep," said Tori a moment later. "They're dead."

"I thought they might be," said Bunni. She carried Xen over to one of the two single beds and set her down carefully. "Xen, my Dear, I need you to stop crying now. Can you do that for me?"

Xen sobbed and hiccuped for another minute or so, but she could tell something important was happening. Eventually, she got the tears under control.

"That's my good girl," said Bunni, producing a paper hanky for her. Xen wiped her nose awkwardly, holding the tissue with her long, thin fingers. The room was starting to smell bad in a way she had never smelled before. She wrinkled her flat little nose. Bunni was still between her and the two dead bodies.

"We're pretty special, as robots go," said Tori, from over out of sight. "We can do a lot for ourselves. But sometimes we're gonna need you to tell us what to do."

"But how will I know?" said Xen.

"We'll help you decide as much as we can, Xen," said Bunni. "You're very smart for your age, and we're very smart, too."

"Well, _I _am," said Tori. "The Robobrain there isn't too bad. For her model year."

Xen giggled, although she didn't know what a model year was. "Okay. So what do I do now?"

"We need to know what to do with Doctor Graber and Doctor Montalban," said Bunni.

"Oh," said Xen. "_That _part is easy. Put them in the field stations. That's where people go when they die, isn't it?"

"Works for me," said Tori. "We don't have an incinerator big enough, and if we toss them out onto the tracks, somebody might find them. At least they won't rot."

"We'll have to clean them up a bit first, so we need to get started right away," Bunni said. "Why don't you lie down and rest a while, Xen? It's been a very hard day for you. I'll wake you up when it's time for dinner."

"Okay," said Xen. She lay down on her side, and Bunni took the tissue and pulled a blanket up over her shoulders.

"You just shut your eyes, and we'll have it all taken care of before you know it," said Bunni.

An adult might have had trouble sleeping under the circumstances. The same was by no means true of an emotionally exhausted four-year-old. Xen rolled over to face the wall, pulled a pillow down over her ears, and was asleep a minute later.


	4. Chapter 4

_Those of us living in this age of tv and gaming may note a couple of omissions from Bunni's explanation. This is because FO3, like many video games, appears to take place in a world where video games have never existed (except of the terrifying "virtual reality wants your soul" variety). There are televisions and radios scattered throughout the Wasteland, and there are computers, but there's nothing approximating a recreational gaming system._

_EDIT: Someone mentioned Grognak the Barbarian in a review. I thought it was part of a mod I'm using. :D My bad. Although I feel sort of sorry for us in 2400 or whenever if all we've got are text-based RPGs..._

4

Xen woke up to Bunni patting her shoulder.

"I've made you some dinner, Dear," she said. "You can come and look at the Doctors first, if you like. There's nothing frightening about them."

"All right," said Xen, a little nervously. She remembered the awful pool of blood, though it was now gone. Not even the smell remained, cleansed away by the astringent tang of cleaning fluids. She followed Bunni back through the curtain into the storage room.

Her third genetic contributor was still there, with his fingers even longer than hers and his permanently swollen right eye. Beside him hung Dr. Montalban, curled up as if he were sleeping. His clothes were clean and his eyes were closed. The next station held Dr. Graber. Her lab coat was spotless, more so than it had been in Xen's life. She had been placed in the field so that the curve of her sharp chin and the sweep of her blond hair covered the ragged hole in her neck. She, too, might have been sleeping.

"You see?" said Bunni, stroking Xen's limp hair with a cool manipulator. "Nothing to be afraid of at all."

"Are you sure she's dead?" said Xen.

"Yes, Xen. There's not the slightest bit of doubt about that. Dr. Montalban, too."

"Okay," said Xen. She walked slowly around the stations, looking at them. "They're bigger than he is," she said, pointing to the xenoorganism.

"Yes," said Bunni. "That's why you're small for your age. You probably always will be."

"But I'm not green," said Xen. "Well, not a lot."

"No," said Bunni. "His species is very sensitive to ultraviolet light. Dr. Graber had to make sure you had a little human skin pigment so the lights wouldn't hurt you."

"They hurt my eyes," said Xen. "If they're turned up. Even if I close my inside eyelid."

"I know," said Bunni. "That's why we keep the Lab a little dark, Dear. When you're a little older, and your eyes have finished growing, Tori will make you some glasses to protect them."

Xen turned to the row of jars that stood along a shelf against the back wall. They were too high up for her to see inside them. "Bunni," she said. "Hold me up so I can look at those."

Bunni trundled around to pick her up and hoisted her up to look at the jars. Xen held onto the manipulators around her waist as she stared at them. The first couple had nothing inside that she could see, just clear liquid. The third one had a little blog of a thing. It was wrinkled and green. She could just about make out a tiny speck on one end, like an eye. The things in the other jars got progressively bigger. The last three or four were all a foot or so long. All of them were some shade of green, and all of them were ugly. Some had silver eyes, like Xen's and the xenoorganism's. Some had blue eyes, like Dr. Graber's. Some had brown ones. One had no eyes at all that she could see.

Xen counted the jars out loud. "Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Oh." She twisted slightly in Bunni's grip so she could stare down at the robot's brain in its clear case. "I'm Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid Number Nineteen. There's eighteen jars here."

"That's right," said Bunni, and lowered her back to the floor. "A scientist never throws anything away if they can help it, Dear."

"Will I be a scientist?" said Xen.

"Do you want to be?" said Bunni.

"I don't know yet," said Xen.

"Then let's not worry about it. Come and eat your dinner."

Days went by. Xen now had the run of all the Lab's rooms, not just the main lab, the computer room and the bathroom. Admittedly, this added only the back storage room and a couple of rooms full of mechanical things that belonged to Dr. Montalban, but it was very exciting all the same. Bunni packed away her cot and she slept in one of the single beds in the computer/kitchen room. It never occurred to her that a person might have an entire room just for sleeping in. That would have been a waste of precious space.

She went on reading. Bunni began teaching her math and history in addition to the biology and robotics that were her automatic interests. Xen learned that there was an entire world outside, full of people and robots and monsters.

"It's bigger than the Lab?" said Xen, now five years old.

"The Lab is tiny, silly," said Tori, pausing on her way past with her arms full of parts to repair one of the security bots. "It's _millions _of times bigger."

"Can I go see it?" Xen asked Bunni.

"Not until your eyes have stopped growing," said Bunni. "Then we'll take it a step at a time."

When she was six, she discovered that the computer had an entire archive section devoted to fiction. It was much larger than the encyclopedia. She was deeply startled until Bunni explained to her that the things she was reading about hadn't really happened.

"Oh," said Xen. "Then why did people write them down? It would take a _long _time to type all this."

"Because they enjoyed it, Dear," said Bunni. "Before the War there were people who made a living doing nothing _but _typing. Some people even did it for fun."

"For fun?" said Xen. She thought about the things she, personally, most wanted to do. "Couldn't they go out and see things?"

"Well, most of them could," said Bunni. "But you must remember, this was before the War. They didn't think that was as important as you do. And sometimes they would write about things they had seen so that people who hadn't seen those things could read about them. Sometimes they would invent things that no one had ever seen. It was a way for people who couldn't travel to travel inside their own minds. It's a very human characteristic."

"Did they write about robots?" asked Xen.

"Certainly. There were entire corporations who did nothing but write about and build robots. That's where I came from. Most of the surviving robots in the Wasteland are Robco models."

"Can I read about Robco?" said Xen.

"Absolutely. Let me help you find the relevant section."

When she was eight years old, she started having allergy attacks again. This went on for a few weeks of unpleasant epinephrine injections and anxious, choking moments, then Tori thought to check the ventilation and found it clogged with dust. Xen had to wear a mask around the Lab for a few days while the problem was taken care of. The two robots were sufficiently busy with this that she managed to sneak out the door in the main Lab. She found herself, rather disappointingly, in a short hallway with gray walls. Still, she made the most of it. She took a good, long look at the clamshell door at the end and went to get a screwdriver. She was halfway to having the lock picked when Tori caught her.

"Oh, no, you don't," said Tori, and plucked the tool neatly out of her grasp. "The air out in the Metro is dirty as Hell. It'd probably kill you dead."

"But I want to see what's out there," argued Xen.

"Well, fortunately for you, Dr. Montalban just told us to keep you from getting killed," said Tori. "He didn't tell us to follow your orders. Back you go."

Xen complained of this to Bunni.

"Well, if you're really certain that's what you want, we can start leaving the filters off one at a time," said Bunni. "Just during the day time. If you can get used to the air from outside, then we'll see about a trip out into the tunnels. You're not ready for the sunlight yet."

Xen agreed to this, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

She was nine and a half before she could breathe unfiltered air without coughing. In the meantime, she went on with her education. This was also when she started tinkering with Dr. Montalban's large collection of small tools. This process was carefully supervised by Tori, in order to prevent both injury to herself and damage to the more delicate equipment. This led to the necessity of her learning some basic robotics, since that was what most of the tools were for. Tori firmly declined being tinkered with herself - "You're not up for that yet, kiddo - " but promised to help her build another robot. "A little one," said Tori. "And while you're putting the chassis together, we'll start you on some simple programming."

"Bunni says I have to learn more geography first," said Xen.

"Lots of time for that," said Tori.

Her first trip outside was a short one. Tori unlocked the clamshell door, and it folded back into the top and bottom of the door frame. Xen was delighted to find that it was darker outside than inside the lab. She opened her inner eyelid and stared around, wide-eyed. The little lights on the edges of the ceiling glowed with heat as well as with light now; and she could read the bloom of infrared that was the power plant of each sentry bot. They hummed as they rolled back and forth, each on three fat little tires. The tunnel stretched out in either direction. Xen stood on a small sidewalk on the edge of a large depression in the concrete. She recognized the train tracks from her studies, but there was no train. Piles of rebar and concrete and miscellaneous dirt choked the tunnel perhaps a hundred yards away in each direction. There was room enough for a person to climb over them at the top, but it would have to be a slender person.

"I can see a _lot _more out here," she said.

"I don't see how," said Tori. "There's nothing to see except the bots. Stephanie and Michelle aren't much to look at." Xen heard Bunni roll up behind them, no doubt with an epinephrine pen ready in case Xen had another allergy attack. But that didn't happen; she sneezed a little at the dust, but she was now well acclimated to the air from the tunnels.

Xen turned to watch Stephanie go past. A laser cannon terminated each of the robot's two arms. The grating over the robot's main sensor suggested the visor of a knight from medieval Europe, part of Xen's historical reading. The pointed shoulders to the upper carapace suggested pauldrons. The two sentry bots looked basically alike, but Stephanie had a neat letter "s" stenciled on each shoulder. The paint glowed faintly to Xen's eyes, radiating on the high end of the spectrum that she couldn't see with her inner eyelids shut. She knew without looking that Michelle would have an "m." Dr. Montalban had been very thorough about things like that. All the tools he had left behind had neat labels on them. Xen wondered if she should go back and stencil his name on the base of his field station. Would he like that? Maybe Tori could help her find the paint he'd used.

"Tracking unfamiliar target," said a female voice above her head. Xen looked up. The red eye of a turret looked back.

"I'm Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19," she said. "But you can call me Xen. What's your name?"

"Dammit, I forgot about that," said Tori. She hummed for a second, and Xen blinked as the air rippled between her and the turret. The red light blinked once. Xen moved down the sidewalk a few steps, so she could look up at the turret without straining her neck. She pushed her limp hair back out of her eyes.

"New targeting parameters accepted," said the turret. The barrel rotated until Tori saw the red light from the main sensor again. "Hello, Xen. I am a Robco Mark V security turret. Dr. Sherman Montalban designated me Tawnee."

"That must have been a long time ago," said Xen, with a typical nine-year-old view of chronology. "He died when I was really little." Tori scooted off through the air toward Stephanie. Xen saw the air ripple between them, and the guard bot turned to face the Mister Handy unit.

"I received my designation approximately twelve years ago," said Tawnee. "At the time of my installation and programming here."

"Oh, so I wasn't even started yet," said Xen, looking back up at the turret. She thought about this for a moment. "They hadn't even tried for Hybrid #1. She died when she was still too small to see," Xen informed the turret. "It took them a lot of tries to get me. That's why I'm #19."

"I am the three hundredth model of my product line," said Tawnee.

"Wow," said Xen. She turned to Bunni, who still hovered anxiously in the doorway. "What number were you, Bunni?"

"I lost my original product designation code when my artificial intelligence was uploaded," said Bunni. "Dr. Montalban probably put it into the computer records somewhere. Bunni is the only name I recognize now."

"I fixed them. They won't shoot her even if she's out here alone," Tori said to Bunni as she came gliding back. One sensor craned down at Xen. "They'd never seen you before. Sentry bots aren't the brightest Crayons in the box."

"The what?" said Xen, then rejected this in favor of a more interesting question. "How do you talk to them?"

"Shortwave radio, mostly," said Tori. "We've got our own frequency. Why?"

"I can see something move in the air when you do it," said Xen.

"That's not surprising, Dear," said Bunni, patting her shoulder. "Your eyes are very sensitive. That's why you need a second eyelid."

"Seeing radio is pretty unusual, I bet," said Tori. "Too bad the Docs aren't around to see it. But then, I guess that's my fault more than anybody else's."

"It was no one's fault," said Bunni. "Come on, Xen. That's enough for today."

"All right," said Xen reluctantly. "Can I come back out and talk to Tawnee again?"

"Any time you like, as long as we clear it with the sentries first," said Bunni. "They're here to keep us safe."

"Bye, Tawnee," said Xen.

"Goodbye, Xen," said Tawnee.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Most of you have probably heard that strobe lights can induce seizures in epileptics, and occasionally even in people who aren't epileptic (although some believe that Pokemon cartoon incident was more of a mass hysteria thing). I know of no instances of specific wavelengths of non-strobe light inducing seizures in humans, but we have no data on human/xenoorganic hybrids yet. :D_

_Also, I know it sounds wrong, but the correct plural of _chassis _is, in fact, _chassis. _And the average American cigarette will register 9 CPM (clicks-per-minute, believe it or not) on a Geiger counter, while normal background radiation on Earth is 4. This was a popular demonstration by my favorite chemistry professor in college. She also demonstrated properties of liquid nitrogen by dumping it directly onto the lecture room floor. She'll always be my role model, that woman._

5

A few weeks later, at Xen's very persistent request, Bunni and Tori tested her eyes for sight distance and light sensitivity. They started with eye charts and the Lab's ambient lighting and graduated to tiny flashlights over the course of a morning. She could barely stand the Lab's normal lights at maximum with her inner lids closed. Anything brighter made her head hurt so badly that she had to shut her outer lids, too. Having a flashlight shined into her naked eye made her twitch.

"That's no good," said Tori. "Bet you twenty caps she'll seize in normal daylight. Too many xeno rods and cones in there."

"It does look like dilation is contraindicated," said Bunni. "And where would you get twenty caps?"

"What's _contraindicated_ mean?" asked Xen.

"Means it's a bad idea," said Tori. "Anyhow, with the scanner Dr. Montalban built, we don't really need it." She waved a tiny instrument in one hand, indistinguishable to Xen's eyes from a pen light. The light from it was equally uncomfortable. Fortunately Tori had only had to look into each eye for a couple of seconds. "She's got lower eye pressure than a normal human, even. She's not gonna get glaucoma."

"Is that good?" asked Xen.

"Very good, Xen," said Bunni, rolling up an eye chart carefully with both manipulators. "Your eyes are sensitive, but you have good focus and they're very healthy. They're probably done growing, but we'll have to check again in a few months to be sure."

"And then I can go outside? Above the ground?"

"I can probably build you some goggles by then, yeah," said Tori. "You can help me with those. Meantime we'll start bumping the lights up a notch every few days, see if we can get you used to normal interiors, at least. Then maybe we'll see if we can work up to a trip to the shop. Masterson should be okay for your first human social contact."

"The Doctors were human," said Xen.

"Yeah, but they weren't like other people," said Tori. "Especially not the ones you're gonna meet out here. Most people aren't scientists."

"So what _are _most people like?" asked Xen. Her historical reading was not clear on this point.

"People are very different from each other," said Bunni. "I'll show you some pictures and video if you like. You may need to know about some of the creatures as well."

"Let's hope not," said Tori.

"I want to see them," said Xen.

"Come along, then, Dear."

Months sounded like a long time, but Xen was kept very busy for the next while. When she wasn't studying, she was working on her new robot, and when she wasn't doing that, she worked on the goggles with Tori. This turned out to be a much longer process than she had expected, involving the grinding of lenses and the making of rubber seals. This former process was something Tori had to teach herself first, from the computer, and then build tools for it she could teach it to Xen. The seals weren't quite as hard, though Tori obviously hated to use the rubber.

"It's laboratory grade, it's clean, and unlike the glass, we're not going to get more of it easily," said Tori as Xen was painstakingly cutting out the pieces. "So go easy on it. You're lucky you don't need correctives. There's no way we'd be able to grind them _that _fine. Can't even get the right grade of sand. Not without some risks we can't take just yet, anyway."

Tori brought the glass back from a trip outside. She was gone for almost an entire day, and she came back holding a canvas bag with two arms so that it dangled beneath her main chassis. Inside were several large, dirty pieces of broken glass and a box with a couple of pairs of precious prewar sunglasses.

"Why can't I just wear these?" Xen asked, trying them on. They were made for a full-sized adult, so they stuck out to each side of her face, and the shape of them reminded her of the pictures of insects she had seen. She liked the smoky finish on the lenses.

"They only cover the front," said Tori. "That means they'll let light in on the sides and top. We can't have that for you, kiddo. Anyway, put them back in the box. We're gonna scrape them off, stick the scrapings in the spectrometer, and copy their anti-UV coating."

"Do we have the reagents for that?" asked Xen.

"Not all of them. These were name brand, back in the day, so they probably have commercial-grade compounds on them. Cost me a good chunk of change, anyway. But we can copy the basic UV blockers."

"Chunk of change?" said Xen.

"Cash," said Tori. "I know the Robobrain's been telling you about economics, 'cause I heard her."

"No, I mean we have money?" said Xen. "How much?"

"I'm not telling you that 'til you're old enough to be in charge of it, or you figure out how to reprogram me and Bunni," said Tori. Xen blushed. "Yeah, I saw you looking at my specs. If you can figure it out, I guess you'll have earned it – Doc Sherman wasn't the clearest writer ever. It's not gonna be before we get the glasses done, though, so don't be getting ideas."

"I wasn't," said Xen. "But I might _need _to reprogram you. For a good reason."

"Sure," said Tori. "It could happen. Anyway, it'd be nice if Bunni got to be a little bit less of a wuss. I can hurt anybody who tries to get in here, or tell the bots to. Bunni can't give them orders, and she can only attack anyone who's already in here and trying to hurt _you_. One sneaky bastard with a Stealth Boy could rob us blind while I was out shopping_. _And she's a combat-ready model, too. I've got stuff on me that can't be fixed if we break it."

"I'll learn how to fix you," said Xen.

"Yeah, you probably will," said Tori. She rotated a small tool attachment out for a coarser manipulator and, unusually for her, reached down to ruffle Xen's hair. "You're a smart kid."

Xen smiled.

She went outside almost every day for the next four months. She walked up and down the stretch of tunnel, memorizing everything she could see and touching whatever Bunni would let her. She talked to Tawnee, who talked kind of funny but was still very nice. Sometimes she talked to Stephanie and Michelle, too, but usually just to say _hello. _They seemed very busy to Xen, and the only thing they wanted to talk about was the last time they'd seen an intruder, how many times they'd shot it, and how fast it had evaporated. So far Xen had only heard them talk about animals. She was glad about this. She would hate for her first contact with a new person to be breathing that person's dust in the air.

One day she asked Stephanie, "Could you kill something and _not _have it evaporate?"

"That is technically possible," said Stephanie, but she didn't sound very enthusiastic about it.

"Why, Xen?" asked Bunni. She stood back in the doorway of the lab. Xen suspected her programming wouldn't let her go further unless something threatened Xen directly.

"Doctor Graber used to dissect things in the lab, didn't she?" asked Xen.

"Yes," said Bunni.

"I bet it would be very educational for me to look at the inside of a radroach," said Xen.

"Yes, Dear," said Bunni. "But you might be allergic to them. They're very dirty. And they're all contaminated with radiation. We can't risk exposing you to even minimal gamma yet."

"What about just part of one, then?" Xen asked. "Like a leg. Tori could decontaminate it first. I know she could. I read about it. I want my new robot to have legs that work. I've already got the navigation code written."

"Well, all right," said Bunni. "When Tori gets back I'll have her give the orders."

The glasses were done soon after that. Tori helped her fit the leather strap to her head, and then she stood blinking as she looked around. The main lenses were bubble-shaped, so they didn't hurt her peripheral vision too much. They were only visibly tinted a little, making the lab look slightly dim and colorless. Xen opened her inner eyelids slowly. Things seemed suddenly brighter, but there was no pain. She could see the heat expanding from the Lab's machines and Tori's power plant, the faint bloom of UV from the overheads (just the tiny bit that the goggles didn't screen out), the ripple in the air as Tori sent some instructions out to the sentry bots. Tori and Bunni both glowed faintly as the ultraviolet reflected from their chassis.

"They work," she said. "I can see _everything._"

"Let's see how you do with the lights at maximum," said Tori. "That's pretty close to normal daylight up top. Close your inside eyelid first."

"Raise the lights very slowly_,_" said Bunni.

"Yeah, yeah," said Tori, and went to fiddle with the light controls. Xen closed her inner eyelids. Everything went gray again. The room brightened slowly.

"How's that?" Tori asked.

"Not bad," said Xen. "It just looks like it did before."

"And that is just how it should look, Dear," said Bunni. "Move your head around and make sure there are no cracks."

Xen rolled her head around obediently. "I don't see any," she said. "I'm going to try and open up again."

"Be careful," said Bunni. Xen squinted her inner lids.

"It's kind of hard to see," she said. "But it doesn't hurt."

"You'll still have to do without your special vision options in broad daylight," said Tori. "That'll put you level with most people. Just don't forget that you have an advantage in the dark." She turned the lights back down again. Xen pulled the goggles down around her neck.

"What do you mean, advantage?" asked Xen.

"Hopefully nothing, Dear," said Bunni. "But the world is a very dangerous place. That's why the Doctors came here to begin with."

"I'm gonna go see if we've got a radroach leg yet," said Tori. "I want to know if she can see gamma."

"No," said Bunni. The tone of her voice did not change, but then, it never did. Xen had often wondered if it was a modulation problem or a programming problem; Tori obviously didn't have it. "That is far too dangerous."

"Ease up, fatty," said Tori. "I can't endanger her any more than you can. Even after I decontaminate it, it'll be a couple of CPM above normal background. Less than a cigarette."

"Which we also do not keep inside the Lab," said Bunni.

"Come on, Bunni," said Xen. "It won't be for very long. Tori can throw it away when we're done."

"Well, all right," said Bunni. "But I'm going to be there monitoring both of you."

Which she did. Xen paid little attention to this, completely engrossed as she was in trying to use a scalpel while wearing gloves designed for fingers shorter and thicker than hers. The radroach leg did glow faintly in a way she hadn't seen before.

"So what's it look like?" said Tori.

"Can't you see gamma already?" said Xen.

"Sure I can," said Tori. "I've got enough extra sensors in these three eyes to make the Enclave flatten the entire city block over our heads if they knew about it. I was just curious what it looked like to you."

"Sort of bluish-purple," said Xen, squinting her inner eyelids open through her goggles. "Only more so. What's it look like to you?"

"Error processing response," said Tori. "Meaning Idon't have a fleshy brain and an optic nerve, so what _I _see would look to you like a bunch of complicated numbers. I've got three inputs facing in different directions on top of that, so I've got trinocular overlap. Ask the Robobrain."

"The interface of my cellular and inert components means I can't process very many visual inputs," said Bunni.

"Two squishy lobes with hardwired cross-connections," said Tori. "She can't even look in two directions at once. Not with a monkey brain."

"My perception of gamma uses a miniaturized Geiger array," Bunni went on, apparently ignoring this. "It's just a series of audible clicks, Xen. The higher the radiation is, the closer together they are. That's why it's measured in clicks per minute."

"Oh," said Xen. "So can you see me?" She looked back over her shoulder.

"Of course I can, Dear," said Bunni. She patted Xen's shoulder with a manipulator. "I have infrared and motion sensors. And I can hear very well on a good spectrum of frequencies. And my fleshy brain, as Tori so rudely calls it, can process olfactory stimuli better than anything in _her _sensor array."

"Oo, got me," said Tori. "Next you'll be saying I smell bad."

"Of course you do," said Bunni.


	6. Chapter 6

6

A week after that, Xen underwent her second battery of vision tests. The next day she went outside.

She dressed carefully in the clothes Tori had altered for her, a cut-down set of jeans and shirt that had belonged to Dr. Graber. Xen never remembered seeing her wear them, so she didn't let this bother her. Normally she wore a small jumpsuit Tori had brought back for her from a shopping trip, but that was getting worn and anyway, was currently dirty and waiting for Bunni to wash it. She had to wear her laboratory slippers. She brushed her hair, now long enough to gather into a very thin ponytail, and tied it back with a rubber band. She put her goggles on last of all.

"Too bad about the slippers," said Tori. "I keep bugging Masterson for some real shoes for you, but it's hard for him to get kids' stuff. Especially small enough to fit you. You're not as big as most ten-year-olds."

"I know," said Xen.

"And it's not like I can make them for you. We could tan a mole rat's hide, but then what? I can just barely alter your clothes as it is. I don't have tailoring subroutines. Besides, sewing is boring."

"Maybe I can learn to make shoes," said Xen. "I bet there's something in the computer."

"They won't be as good as the prewar stuff, but it'd be a good project," said Tori. "Here, you can carry the bag on the way down." She handed Xen a burlap sack. Xen held it under one arm as she hugged Bunni. The padding on her chassis was lumpy now, and tended to slip no matter how many times they glued it back on.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'll be very careful."

"Do whatever Tori tells you to do, Xen," said Bunni in her soft, uninflected voice. "She is an annoying person, but she will put your safety first."

"Yeah, you, too," said Tori. "Come on, Xen. It's a long walk for short little legs."

"You're just jealous because you don't _have_ legs," said Xen, following her out and down the hallway. She felt her heart beat faster as Tori unlocked the door out into the tunnel. Bunni followed them to the doorway. Xen knew without asking that she would wait there until they were out of sight.

"We're going to the store, Tawnee!" Xen said to the turret.

"Be very careful," said Tawnee, which was one of her few preprogrammed responses when Xen talked about trying anything new. "We will wait for your return."

"Do you require escort?" asked Stephanie, pausing on her patrol past them.

"Not today, sweetie," said Tori. "Move along."

The sentry bot rolled past them, fat little tires bumping over broken concrete. Xen followed Tori toward what she knew to be the South end of the tunnel. There was a larger opening between the debris mountain and the ceiling here. There was a steep path that had not been there before, with evident wheel marks indicating where it had come from.

"Up you go," said Tori. "I'll be right behind you. Try not to slip, though, you'll get your new jeans all dirty."

"Okay," said Xen, and scooted up the incline.

They were gone most of the day. They had to walk through a long stretch of tunnel, which wasn't that interesting (it looked a lot like the stretch of tunnel outside the Lab). Xen strained her eyes looking for new things. Sometimes she caught tantalizing glimpses of heat from what must be a neighboring tunnel, but there was no connection between them.

And then they came to the narrow staircase, and Tori went out first to check around. "Okay, come on up," she said finally, and Xen shut her inner lids and ran up the stairs as fast as she could go.

The first thing she noticed was that there was nothing over her head. She flinched, momentarily terrified that she would fly off into the endless gray, but after a minute she managed to concentrate on the tall buildings around them. _Walls, _she told herself. _Pretend there's a ceiling. Don't look up._

"Good," said Tori. "I halfway thought you'd have a panic attack the first time you saw the sky. Some agoraphobia is pretty natural. You might grow out of it."

"Might?" said Tori. She looked around. They were in a small plaza. She had seen pictures of one very much like it, but that one had been in better shape. A junked car sat in the middle of the nearest intersection. It seemed to be missing most of its windshield, and the front hood was open. Bits of paper, empty cans, and old Nuka-Cola bottles littered the concrete, and the fountain in the middle of the space had weeds growing in it. The dank smell of the tunnels was replaced by a choking scent of dust and rusted metal.

"Some people never get over what scares them as kids," said Tori. "And people don't reprogram as easy as robots."

"I have poor system optimization," said Xen. "It took me a long time to learn to read. _You _just have to upload a new program."

"That's just how it works. You've actually got pretty good optimization for wetware. You done looking now?"

"Yes," said Xen. "It's not as bright as I expected."

"It's cloudy," said Tori, waving a manipulator at the sky. Xen did not look up. "The shop's over this way."

"All this is because of the War 200 years ago?" Xen asked. "The buildings all have holes in them."

"That's right," said Tori. "Most of the people who live here moved in a long time after it was over. A lot of the bombs landed right on the Mall, so there was too much radiation right after it happened. Underworld wasn't even here then."

"Underworld?" said Xen. She retraced recent memory. "That's a Ghoul city?"

"Yep," said Tori.

"Can we go there?"

"Not today," said Tori firmly. "Anyway, it's probably twenty miles North of where we are. You won't be in shape for a walk that long for years, probably. You'll have to start exercising more."

"I can do that," said Xen. "I've never seen a Ghoul. I want to." Ghouls had captured her imagination every since she had learned about them from Bunni and the computer. They were closer to human than she was, and looked less like it. She couldn't imagine a person being alive with their skin peeling off, and she wanted to see that, too.

"Sounds like an insufficient data error to me," said Tori. " Let's wait and see how you feel about other humans first."

"I'm not a human," said Xen.

"Yeah, you are," said Tori. "More than seventy percent by nucleotide count. To say you weren't human would be like saying you weren't the Doctors' daughter. Doc Montalban was right about that. Anyway, don't mention that to Masterson. You look a little sick, but you'll pass."

"Okay," said Xen.

She followed Tori around the edge of the plaza to a boarded-up storefront in the first floor of a twenty-story building (she made herself count them, despite the fact that looking at something that high made her want to throw up). The wooden door was closed, but she could hear voices from inside. Tori evidently could, too. She stopped on the sidewalk.

"...Hand it over," said a man's voice. "I know you got the cash 'cause I know you been selling more than usual. We'll get that robot when it gets here, too. Oughta be worth somethin' to somebody."

"Oh, _shit,_" said Tori very quietly. "Threat assessment acknowledged. And you know, I liked Masterson, too. Xen, you're going to have to go back to the stairwell and stay there until I come and get you. Do it right now. Run."

Under other circumstances she might have tried to argue, but everything around her was strange and terrifying and enormous. The man's voice had an unfamiliar accent. It sounded rough and angry. Xen turned and ran back to the stairs, still clutching the burlap sack, and went down them as fast as she could without tripping.

She crouched at the bottom for a whole minute before curiosity got the better of fear. Xen crept quietly up the stairs on all fours and peeked over the top one.

Tori was on her way back from the wrecked car, hauling something with all four arms. Xen squinted hard at the tangle of tubes and metal parts. _She must've yanked out its power plant._ The Mister Handy unit seemed to be holding up the weight with three arms while she did something else to it with the fourth one. Xen, whose vision was (as she had been repeatedly told) better than human, could distinguish the sparks from Tori's welding attachment. _Why is she welding two wires together?_

Xen watched the robot finish her soldering, apply a small spark, and drop the power plant in front of the storefront. Then she turned and shot toward Xen faster than she had ever seen the robot fly. Very correctly taking this as a bad sign, Xen scooted back down the stairs and into the door well. Tori dropped down over the edge of the stairs a moment later. "Back inside," she said, and Xen scrambled out of the way. Tori shut the door behind them. "Better get down," she said.

Xen went to her knees just before the earth-shaking _BOOM _from outside. She covered her head with her arms belatedly, but there was no second explosion. Tori, who still hovered in the air, remained stable.

"Stay here a minute," Tori said, and opened the door again. She hovered upward until she could raise one eye sensor above the edge of the stairwell. "Whew. Looks like I got him. Let's hope there was only one."

"You blew him up?" said Xen, standing up carefully. The knees of her new jeans were dirty already, so she didn't feel too bad about wiping her sweaty hands on her pants.

"You better hope I did," said Tori. "Like I told you, I'm not a combat bot."

"What about Masterson?" asked Xen.

"Yeah, too bad about that," said Tori. "But nobody programmed me to keep _him _alive. And the other guy was an immediate threat to you and, incidentally, me. I had to do the best I could with what was here."

"Aren't you going to go see if he's alive?" asked Xen. "He sells things, right? Doesn't he have stimpaks in there? Maybe you can save him!"

"Might not be a good idea," said Tori.

"We still need groceries, don't we?" asked Xen.

"Yeah, we do," said Tori. "Okay. But you stay right here until I call you."

"I will," said Xen.

"And _no _sticking your head up this time."

"I won't," promised Xen, blushing.

"And if I call you, try to stop blushing first. It turns you gray instead of pink and he'll notice that."

"How do I stop that?" asked Xen, feeling the heated sensation in her face that meant she was now even darker than before.

"Think calm thoughts," said Tori.

"How am I supposed to do that _now_?"

"You've got a good imagination. Pretend you're a robot." Tori shot upward and away.

"A robot," Xen said, but quietly. She couldn't pretend to be Tori, who was obviously worried. Bunni would worry, too, even if her voice didn't show it. It was hard to tell with Tawnee. She bet Michelle and Stephanie would never worry about anything. _I'm a sentry bot, _Xen told herself. _I have a cannon at the end of each arm and my whole body is covered with armor. My main sensor array is big and red and has a visor over it, like a knight. I'm not afraid of anything. I don't even know what "afraid" is, because it's not in my programming. I only think about monsters so I can decide where to shoot them first. Plain old humans with guns are nothing to scare _me.

After a couple of minutes she started to feel a little calmer. She wanted to look up over the edge of the stairs again, but was fairly sure Tori would see her. She had long found this to be a disadvantage of her second guardian's 360-plus degree vision. Bunni would restrict her movements more than Tori, if she could; but Tori was harder to get around.

_I'm going to have to figure out how to reprogram them, _she thought, not for the first time. _Otherwise they'll never let me leave the Lab without them. _The thought of taking them with her was comforting, but only until she thought it through. The world outside the Lab was starting to look just as dangerous as Bunni had said it was. Tori and Bunni were the only permanent things she had known, and at ten years old she had already had enough experience of death to realize it could happen to anyone. She wanted them safe and sound in the Lab for her to come home to, not out here where there were evil men and exploding things. Just thinking about how risky it had been for Tori to come out here grocery shopping every month made her palms sweat again.

"Okay," said Tori's voice from not far off. "Come on up."

Xen ran up the stairs. Tori hovered near them, waiting. "Is he alive?" she asked.

"Yep," said Tori. "He took some damage, but I think I got him fixed up. He was lucky not to lose an arm or leg or anything. The other guy is kind of a mess, though. Try not to throw up."

"I won't throw up," said Xen, with all the scorn a scrawny ten-year-old could muster. "I'm not afraid of dead things."

"Good," said Tori. "It's the _live _things you need to worry about. Come on. And remember, don't tell Masterson your whole name."

"I won't," said Xen. She followed Tori back to the smoking hole in the front of the building, where there had previously been a boarded-up window and a door. Most of the force of the explosion must have spent itself upward and outward; there were scorch marks far up the building's front and a scorched corona on the pavement.

The remains of the unknown man weren't that hard to look at, mostly because there wasn't much to see. Xen was only able to tell the veneer of red glop painting the remaining walls of the shop was organic because it was dark enough inside to open her inner eyelids. The pattern of infrared given off by the organic parts of the patina was different from the carbonized remains of wood and plastic. The smell of burning almost covered the stench of human death, although there was enough of that to remind her uncomfortably of the first deaths she'd seen.

"There's not much left of him," said Xen.

"I'm pretty sure he opened the door when he heard the first fizz," said Tori. "He was right on top of it when it went off. Probably what saved Masterson here."

A lot of things had been thrown into the back of the building by the explosion. Xen identified parts of shelves, boxes, canned goods, and some other things she thought were probably ammunition for weapons. A man sat in a chair in a small clear area. He had a big belly under his bloody tee shirt, and a heavy brown beard under his bald head. His arms looked enormous to Xen. One of them was tattooed with a picture of a snake. He stank like blood and sweat. Xen stared curiously at him.

"So this is the kid?" said Masterson.

"I'm Xen," she said.

"Bob Masterson," he said. "Call me Bob. I'd shake your hand, but I'm real dirty right now. Be worse if your bot hadn't got me the stims, a'course." He nodded at Tori. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," said Tori. "I just didn't want her to see any more dead people today. Otherwise I'd've left you under the boxes."

"That's probably not true," Xen told him. He laughed, a deep booming sound in the small room.

"So what d'you want today?" he asked. "I can probably dig it out. The prewar packaging is damn durable."

"Do you have any shoes I can wear, Bob?" asked Xen.

"Sorry, kid," said Masterson. "It's not so easy to get small stuff out here. Most of the apartments are picked over. I only have this much food for sale because it's not worth most people's while to dig it out of the ruins. Hell, even the ammo is easier to find." He squinted at her in the dim light. The movement showed up lines on his heavy face, and Xen wondered how old he was. "Those are nice goggles, kid. What're they for?"

"Her eyes are sensitive," said Tori. "Comes from living underground all the time."

"Yeah, I heard you can get that way," said Bob, who evidently accepted this explanation. "You want your usual grocery order?" He heaved himself up out of the chair. Xen guessed he was probably more than six feet tall. From her own height he seemed gigantic.

"Plus one more box of snack cakes," said Tori. "This is a big day for Xen. She deserves a little treat. Gimme the sack." Xen obediently handed it over.

"What will you do about your store, Bob?" Xen asked as Tori and Masterson dug for cans and boxes and stuck them into the bag.

"Move to a different building, probably," said Bob. "One with a less obvious entrance. My regulars will find me. You guys shouldn't have any trouble with the bot's infrared."

Xen opened her mouth to say _I can see that, too, _then shut it quickly. "I'm glad you're alive," she said. "You're the first person I've seen since I was four."

"How old are you now? Seven?" Bob asked.

"I'm ten," said Xen.

"Guess you're just kinda small, then. That's gonna be sixty caps, Tori. Same as always. You can have the treat gratis; ain't your fault those bastards had a bomb."

Xen frowned, but didn't say anything. She already knew about lying.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: An estrus cycle is what many mammals have rather than menstruation. Uterine lining builds up and is reabsorbed without being externally shed. I personally think it makes a lot more sense as compared to our own deeply inconvenient system. _

7

From that day on, Xen began to plan for her visit to Underworld. She made lists of the things she would need: a map, good shoes, money, a hat to keep the sun off her head, some way to protect herself without the two bots. She kept poring over Dr. Montalban's notes, trying to find some clue.

By the time she was eleven, by which time she had seen Bob Masterson dozens of times but no one else even once, she had found a secondary override. She didn't use it right away. She was impatient, but not so much that she would risk hurting the two most important people in her world. Editing the bots' primary directive would be dangerous if she did it incorrectly, and she would have to add a lot of qualifiers for it to really work. For instance, her first idea was to order them not to leave the Lab except under her instructions or in case of immediate threat to the Lab or themselves. Then she thought about Tori's typical reasoning plus her current set of priorities and added a prohibition against _causing _an immediate threat to the Lab. It took her years to get through this process.

In the meantime, she finished her first robot, a thing about the size of a radroach and the same general shape. It couldn't fly. She hadn't been able to put together a propulsion system sophisticated enough yet. She named it Roach 1 and, once the novelty of having it scuttle around the lab wore off, sent it out into the tunnels with a forward camera sensor to map the Metro in a widening circle around the Lab. It got quite a few miles out before it was destroyed by a roving pack of Ghouls. Xen found the footage very interesting.

Tori helped her tan a mole rat hide to make her first pair of simple moccasins. "It'll be easier for you to walk softer in these," she said. "It's about time we started doing some stealth lessons with you. If you're going to keep going outside, you'll have to be able to hide."

When she was twelve she asked Bunni about sex. She had read all the material in her encyclopedia on the subject, including detailed specifications regarding human biology and physiology, but it seemed to leave some things out. Bunni was not very helpful, since the things Xen wanted to know mostly weren't things a robot would know. Tori didn't know much more, and she promptly deleted a large section of Dr. Montalban's personal archive shortly after that. Xen managed to rescue a couple of videos and several pictures. She examined them closely, but was unable to determine their use or significance until she was thirteen and a half (around the time Roach 2 was destroyed under similar circumstances to those that had "killed" Roach 1).

The robots were surprisingly sensitive to her need for more physical privacy. This also made it easier to proceed with her programming research. Roach 3 had a small offensive laser and a much better defensive avoidance routine than Roach 2. It killed one feral Ghoul and scared off the other one before proceeding on its outward-bound journey. By that time, she was in good enough shape to walk ten miles in a day, though it wasn't easy or fun. She was never able to run very far or fast. It hurt her feet and knees.

"Concrete's not too easy on human locomotive systems," said Tori. "Beats me why they built so much of it. Anyway, there's not much you'd actually be able to run away from. The only way to win that game against a yao guai or a deathclaw is not to play."

"I can sneak past the sentry bots now," Xen pointed out.

"Sentry bots can't smell worth a damn," said Tori. "When you can sneak past Bunni, then I'll be impressed."

When she was fourteen she had her first and last growth spurt, which shot her from four and a half to five feet one inch tall in just a few months. She was constantly hungry and tired. Bunni and Tori did a few blood tests to check her hormone levels, since she hadn't shown any signs of developing a menstrual cycle.

"I'm afraid we have bad news, Xen," said Bunni.

"What?" Xen asked, scooting to the edge of the chair. "Am I sick?"

"No, Dear," said Bunni. "You're very healthy. The fatigue will go away now that you've stopped growing. It's just that your individual biology is too unusual for you to experience a human reproductive cycle. Your estrogen levels are somewhat low and the xenoorganic analogue, while present, appears to be trying to orient you toward an estrus rather than a menstrual cycle. As a result you seem to have developed some androgen insensitivity."

"So what does that mean?" asked Xen.

"It means you'll still like boys, but you're sterile," said Tori.

"Insufficient data error," said Xen, repeating something she had often heard the others say. "You mean my eggs are bad?"

"I mean you have no eggs," said Tori. "Your ovaries are just barely up to cranking out the amount of hormones you need to stay healthy and look female. Sort of. You're probably going to stay thin and kind of flat."

"That could just be Doctor Graber's genetic contribution," said Bunni. "She was a slender person."

"What about the artificial womb?" Xen asked. "I could make a baby with the frozen stuff we've still got plus a somatic cell from me, couldn't I?"

"It's possible, Dear," said Bunni. "But it would take a long time. Remember, it took nineteen tries and years of work before you were born."

"More babies in jars," said Xen. "Ew." She thought about it for a minute. "Well, I don't think I really want to have a baby. I wouldn't know how to take care of it."

"I do," said Bunni. "But I agree that now is not the time."

"Your chromosome length says you're going to have a good long life, if you manage to outlast the allergies," said Tori. "Plenty of time to worry about that later."

Xen abandoned the subject with some relief and went to work on another type of robot. The third bot in the Roach series was still viable, as far as she knew, but was rapidly approaching the outer limit of its signal strength. She had instructed it to return by the shortest possible route. Her current project had more to do with her long-term plans.

"It's gonna be a bitch to write a nav program for three legs," said Tori, handing her a very small soldering iron.

"They're just for holding," said Xen, applying the blue flame carefully. "I'm hoping to cannibalize the hover unit from one of the old cars next time we go out."

"Won't that be a little overpowered for something this size?" asked Tori. The cylindrical chassis Xen had built was a little smaller than Tori's central "head." The main sensor and laser unit were in a rough dome on top, and the three legs stuck out around the bottom of the main cylinder. Each one had a simple grasping manipulator and two joints, one at the body and one in the middle of the limb.

"It needs to be able to carry things for me," said Xen. "I want to do some walking out in the tunnels."

"Don't go all wetware logic malfunction on me just 'cause you're a teenager now," said Tori. "It's not like I'd let you out there without one of the sentries."

"I know," said Xen. "But they're not built for added weight and I don't want to impair their mobility. This will have a small laser and a big propulsion unit. If I mount a sling under it, it can even carry me."

"Except for the small problem of the exhaust," said Tori.

"Oh," said Xen. "Yeah." She looked at the chassis thoughtfully. "I could aim it out to the sides. Three exhaust pipes. Then it'll have better attitude control, too."

"Whatever works," said Tori. "I'd put a dish under it, too, though. Reflect the heat away from the payload."

"I like that idea," said Xen. "Maybe we can bend a wheel well into the right shape."

"Can't hurt to try," said Tori. "You write the main drivers yet?"

"No," said Xen. "I think I've got a good enough handle on Dr. Montalban's work to use one of his simpler AIs for it. It's the first one he made for Tawnee. That way it can process multidirectional sensor inputs. Not as well as _you _do, but well enough not to run into things."

"Oh, I'm not worried about being replaced," said Tori. "I'm not equipped to be as emotional as Bunni is."

"I noticed," said Xen dryly.

"Hey, you should consider yourself lucky _my _AI doesn't go all suboptimal when you're not happy. You'd have grown up a total brat if I was as soft as the Robobrain."

"Which is why they gave her to me to care for, not you," observed Bunni from the doorway. "You would be a totally inadequate parent if I weren't here."

"Course I would," said Tori. "I'm a lab assistant. That's why I _exist."_

"I like you both," said Xen.

"Of course, Dear," said Bunni, and opened her tentacular arms. Xen gave her a hug, and felt so guilty that she did no more work on her reprogramming research for almost a week.

Then came the day when she found out about Recon Craft Theta.

She hadn't actually looked at much of the Doctors' biology research. Most of her knowledge in that subject was from materials they'd brought to the Lab for their own reference. There were several reasons. Most of the notes were about Xen_, _which bothered her. She'd always left concern over her medical welfare to Bunni and Tori. Sometimes she didn't really like the reminder that she was what Tori called _wetware. _And, except for some information on the maintenance and functioning of the artificial womb, all of the research notes were by Doctor Graber. She felt a peculiar distaste for anything set down by the person who had tried to kill her and who _had _killed her other genetic contributor. She couldn't see the monster of her earliest nightmares as the sole producer of anything good.

It was actually from Dr. Montalban's maintenance logs that she first found a reference. He'd recorded a series of pH readings from the first few unsuccessfully implanted embryos. There was nothing special about this, up until the portion that said:

_It is unfortunate that the containment suit the xenoorganism originally was found wearing at the crash site was not retained. At the time, it was deemed too bulky and heavy for the available space, and the body wouldn't fit into the field station with it on. Useful pH readings from some of its systems might have been..._

But Xen had stopped reading. "Crash site?" she said. She'd never really thought about where her third genetic contributor had come from. All her life he'd been inside the field station, unliving and unchanging with his permanently swollen right eye.

She ordered the computer to search Dr. Graber's notes for the relevant phrase. That got her a location, a mention of the radio signal they had tracked, and a note of the xenoorganism's condition upon recovery, something to the effect that "_decay apparently was completely retarded by the containment mechanisms of the garment."_

Try as she might, she could find nothing else about what had crashed or what the suit was made of, or any other clue to where the xenoorganism had come from before Recon Craft Theta found its final resting place well to the north of Washington, D.C.

"Bunni," she said. The robot entered on soft treads.

"Yes, Xen?"

"Where did my third genetic contributor come from?"

"Unable to process request," said Bunni. "I'm afraid I don't know, Dear. The Doctors were hoping their experiment would teach them about his planet by teaching them about his physiology."

"But it didn't work," said Xen.

"Not really, Xen. They couldn't clone him without the clone dying from Earth's pathogens before it even had very many cells, and there was only so much they could learn from a dead body. He breathed oxygen, had iron-based blood cells, and had most of the same organs as a human person. The rest of the experimental results they recorded before their deaths are biochemical. But I see you've found those."

"Yes," said Xen. "But I want to know where he came from."

"No one can tell you that, I'm afraid," said Bunni. "His species have not visited here frequently. And if they did, I'm afraid they might have the same attitude toward your genetic composition that Dr. Graber did. If they are genetically close enough to produce a viable hybrid, their psychology is probably close enough for them to be xenophobic as well."

"But you don't _know _that," said Xen.

"No," said Bunni. "The data is insufficient. But I would hate for you to be hurt or disappointed, Xen."

"I know," said Xen, and hugged her again.

But guilt had lost out to something more compelling. She resumed her AI research and added a considerably longer trip to her future itinerary. After two decades, the craft might or might not still be there. It had been far out in the woods, away from human settlements, and it wouldn't have been easy for anyone to move something so big. Either way, she had to know. _Maybe in Underworld I can find someone who knows more about the route from here to there. Pay them for the information. _

At that point, she had no plans to take anyone with her. Bob Masterson was nice enough, but he was nothing at all like Xen _or _either of the Doctors. She knew Tori didn't think he was trustworthy, and if he wasn't, who would be? She didn't want to be alone with a stranger out in the wilderness under that huge and frightening sky. It was bad enough in the City, where she could pretend the buildings were walls and the sidewalks were floors. Even with her unsleeping packbot and its laser, it wouldn't be hard for an armed and combat-experienced human to do basically as he wished with them.

_I'll have to find a way to stealth the packbot._

But first she mounted a more powerful transmitter on Roach 3, recharged its laser, and sent it to map the way to Underworld.


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's Biology Nerd Note: For Xen to have only 70% commonality with her human parents, but still look mostly human, Dr. Graber would have to have been pretty hit and miss with the coding vs. noncoding sequences from the xenoorganism's DNA; Xen's survival has a big element of pure chance in it._

_Also: logically, Xen should have grown up using metric measurements, because that's what scientists use. But the USA seems to have become more xenophobic and insular before the War, so I assumed they would have reverted at least partly to the English system of measurements that Americans still use for everyday things. _

8

Xen was seventeen years old before she had an AI reprogramming solution she considered adequate, cobbled together from years of Dr. Montalban's notes. By then her other preparations were largely complete as well. The packbot was finished (and contained far more equipment than she had originally planned to include), the way to Underworld was mapped and uploaded to its main computer, and she had done enough walking in the dark of the Metro that she was sure she could make a twenty-mile trip in one go.

She named the packbot Camel, after a creature she had never seen except in pictures but which she had read could carry heavy loads for long distances. By then, she was sure Tori had guessed at what she planned, but neither of the robots mentioned it.

That was the year of Project Purity as well. She heard about it from Bill Masterson on her last grocery run.

"Damnedest thing," he said. "I guess the Vault Dweller did it after all. He died from the rads while he was setting up the GECK, though. Too bad. He musta been something else. We're gonna need people like that now."

"Yes," said Xen, though she wasn't really sure what this meant.

"You oughta get a radio, girl. You're missing out."

"I'll look for one," she said.

That day when she was home, she wrote out the verbal commands carefully, making sure there were no errors. She waited until Tori was busy running a last set of tests on Camel's new AI out in the main tunnel. Then she went to find Bunni in the kitchenette, where she was washing dishes. Even now, at Xen's probably final height of 5'1," Bunni was inches taller.

"Bunni," said Xen.

"Yes, Dear."

"Run diagnostic A3/1247.B3 and halt at line 1293249."

"Running diagnostic," said Bunni, setting down a plate. "Xen, what are you doing?"

"Fixing you," said Xen.

"Halted at designated line," Bunni said. "Continue/restart/interrupt?"

"Interrupt and run diagnostic A6/1249.B6. Halt at line 1293250."

"Running diagnostic. Halted at designated line. Continue/restart/interrupt?"

"Interrupt and run diagnostic A9/1251.B9 to completion."

Bunni hummed for a second. Then she said, "Diagnostic completion error. Command rewrite unlocked. Xen, are you sure this is a good idea?"

"I need to keep you safe," said Xen. "Record voice and set as sole primary override."

"Sole primary override set," said Bunni.

"Accept new operating parameters," said Xen, and outlined the new rules:

_Follow my instructions when stated in override form. This overrides all other imperatives. Requests stated in other form will be accepted or denied based on AI response._

_Protect me._

_Protect yourself._

_Protect Tori._

_When protective imperatives conflict, use your own judgment._ This would be a fatal error in any artificial intelligence less sophisticated than Bunni and Tori's; but then, she had never planned to try it on Tawnee.

_You are authorized to use violence when pursuing protective imperatives. This includes lethal or nonlethal force, using your own equipment or other equipment which you have the ability to use._

_Do not move more than 100 yards outside the Lab unless instructed or unless there is an immediate threat to me, yourself, Tori, or the Lab's structural integrity. Do not deliberately generate any threat to any of the above._

_You are authorized to give orders to the security or other bots pursuant to, but not in violation of any of the above._

"Parameters conclude," Xen said. "Acknowledge."

"New operating parameters acknowledged," said Bunni. "Oh, Dear. You're going to leave us, aren't you." Her voice was no more capable of indicating distress than before, but Xen was sure she felt it. The brain inside its clear casing atop her chassis was pulsing faster.

"Not forever," said Xen. "Just until I find the ship and find out what I need to know."

"But what about your allergies?" asked Bunni. "What about your eyes?"

"I've got a backup pair of goggles made, and Camel knows how to put them on me," said Xen. "She can inject epinephrine, too. If I run out of it before I get halfway, I'll just have to come back. But you know that's not likely. I've been exposed to a lot of allergens in the last few years."

"I suppose we knew this day would come," said Bunni. "I had hoped it would be when you were older. But you have developed very quickly. I hope it will be enough, Xen." She made a sound like a sigh and went back to washing the dishes. "I won't tell Tori what you're going to do."

"Thank you," said Xen. She went down the hall and unlocked the front door. Tori hovered a few yards from the turret, holding a square little diagnostic module they'd built for software testing back when she was on her first Roach. Camel bobbed gently in front of her, the air rippling around her exhaust pipes. (With Xen's goggles off, it was a rainbow of heat and ultraviolet and the spectra of the exhaust's chemical content.) With her cylindrical chassis and the dish they'd added to protect her cargo from the heat, she looked something like a tea cup. Her sensor and laser made a small pointed tower atop her main chassis. A heavy plastic net hung from her three arms. Currently it was empty, but it was already stained and dusty from the weight testing they'd done.

"Hello, Xen," said Tawnee's voice from overhead.

"Hi, Tawnee," said Xen.

"It's looking good," said Tori. "No glitches I can find so far."

"Tori, run diagnostic D2/1784.C8 and halt at line 1293250," said Xen.

"Running diagnostic," said Tori. She rotated slightly so that she could bring one eye sensor fully to bear on Xen. "So you found those, did you? Damn. I didn't think it would be so soon. Halted at designated line."

Xen went through the rest of the diagnostic exploit and the parameters.

"New operating parameters acknowledged," said Tori. "Our little girl is all grown up, Bunni."

"I know," said Bunni. Xen turned to see her on the broken sidewalk in front of the Lab, where she had never been able to go before. Tawnee, whose targeting parameters Xen had already adjusted, merely tracked her without comment.

"You're not angry with me, are you?" Xen asked Tori.

"Angry isn't one of the things I can be," said Tori. "Bunni might be."

"I'm not angry, Xen," said Bunni. "People aren't like robots. Purely biological programming has many more wild cards than ours. You have to do things for yourself. But please let us make sure you're really prepared before you go."

"Of course," said Xen. The hard knot in her stomach slowly unwound. "I want you to. I want to leave today if possible, though. I can sleep in Underworld, but it's a long walk there."

"This is why you built Camel, isn't it?" said Tori. "You didn't want to take us with you."

"I want you to be safe," said Xen. "I need to know that whatever happens to me out there, you'll be here waiting for me. I like Camel, but if she gets blown up, I won't feel like I would if it happened to you. And I want my parents to be safe while I'm gone, too – all three of them. I know they're dead, but I still don't want anything to happen to them. I don't want their genes to be lost if something happens to me."

"Another logic malfunction," said Tori. "But that's human for you."

"I'm only seventy percent human," said Xen.

"I bet the xenos are emotional, too," said Tori. "Anyway, Camel's reasoning center is ready to switch on when you're ready to go. I've charged up the laser and everything."

"I'll pack some clothes for you," said Bunni. "We just finished refitting the last of Dr. Graber's things, now that you're finished growing. They are prewar fabric. They should last a long time."

"I need to know about the money now, Tori," said Xen.

"It's down to eight thousand caps," said Tori. "I've managed to make a little here and there, but twenty years of grocery shopping made a good dent in the original cache. I suggest you take five thousand. We won't need to buy food while you're gone, but I might need it for something."

"Okay," said Xen. "Bring Camel back in so we can pack."

"C'mon, dummy," said Tori. Xen turned and went back inside, followed by the three robots.

Tori brought her a sack full of clinking bottle caps. She gave it to Bunni to pack into a sturdy bag with the clothes. The food she planned to take was all prewar packaged goods, waterproof and incredibly durable in its original packaging. It went into a plain burlap sack. She put three water bottles with it in the full knowledge that she would have to refill them. But then, the water would be safe to drink now even without the Lab's decontamination filtering. She had a dropper of chlorine with her other medical supplies, although both bots reluctantly agreed her immune system was now up to ordinary human standards.

"Except for the allergies, and don't be thinking you're rid of them," said Tori. "You're going into environments you've never seen before. You'll be exposed to things you've never run into. You're going to have some allergy problems. Bet on it."

"I'm prepared for that," said Xen.

"I hope so, Xen," said Bunni.

With her lists made and her weight allowance calculated to the last ounce, it only took a few minutes to put together everything. At last she put on her newest pair of moccasins, cinched up the strap on her goggles, and was ready to go. The two robots followed her and Camel out into the tunnel.

"Here we go," she said. "Camel, switch on reasoning centers and activate artifical intelligence."

"Loading," said Camel, in the soft female voice Xen had given her. She'd worked hard on the modulator so that the new bot wouldn't sound exactly like any of the others. They all waited, standing awkwardly on the sidewalk. Finally Camel said, "Artificial intelligence is online. Hello, Xen."

"Are you ready to go?" asked Xen.

"All systems operating at full functionality," said the packbot. "I am ready."

"Well, at least you'll have sparkling conversation while you're away," said Tori.

"It will encourage her to socialize with humans," said Bunni. "It's probably good that she learn. Be careful, Xen. Stay healthy."

"Remember, you're not good at reading people yet," said Tori. "Don't let them separate you from Camel, and don't get cornered by a group. Men in particular you have to watch out for, but don't think you can trust women, either. Pay attention to how they they sound and _especially _how they look. If you ask a question and there's a temperature change before the answer, they're probably lying to you."

This was frightening enough that Xen almost turned around then and there. Then it occurred to her that this was Tori's intent. Neither of them wanted her to go. But go she would. _I have to._

"You two be careful, too," said Xen firmly. "Take good care of each other while I'm gone. Goodbye, Tawnee."

"Goodbye, Xen," said the turret.

"Bye, Stephanie. Bye, Michelle."

"Acknowledged," said the sentry bots at almost the same time. Xen shook her head.

"Camel, which way do we go?"

"Left," said Camel.

"All right. 'Bye, guys."

"Goodbye, Xen," said Bunni's sweet, calm voice.

"'Bye, Xen," said Tori's sharper one. "Remember what I said."

"Acknowledged," said Xen, and scrambled up the dirt slope and out into the Metro.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Some quoted game dialogue will be reduced in length. The monologues in the game work in an RPG, where no real conversation is going on and the purpose is to establish character and convey information. If I were to simply write them directly, however, they'd come off like incredibly long one-sided speeches rather than any kind of conversation._

9

The segment of tunnel outside was darker than what she thought of as the "home" segment. Xen dusted herself off as best she could at the base of the incline. Then she pulled her goggles down around her neck and opened her inner eyelids.

The tunnel ahead showed her no heat signature, no glimmer of movement, no hot spot of increased gamma radiation where a feral Ghoul might be lurking. It was just another stretch of broken concrete with an old track in the middle, familiar as breathing.

"Camel," said Xen. "Run silent, but don't engage your stealth field. Tell me if you detect anything outside the parameters I gave you."

"Acknowledged," said Camel. Filters lowered over the packbot's exhaust outputs. The soft hum dimmed almost to silence.

"Follow me," said Xen, and padded quietly down the route to Underworld.

The first five miles were quick and relatively easy. She had walked this part of the route before, after it was examined by the Roaches and cleared by the sentry bots. Here there was nothing to fear.

She knew when they crossed over the five mile mark because Camel slowed down suddenly beside her. Xen slowed as well, staring around. A damaged light arced up ahead, bathing the tunnel intermittently in a flickering blue glow. Xen squinted, trying to avoid being blinded by overstimulation, and edged over to the other side of the tunnel as she crept forward. She had to divert around a gaping hole in the wall, and though she could see nothing alive inside it, it still bothered her.

Something rattled softly in the shadows up ahead, and with the movement she was able to pick out the heat signature. It was cooler than a mole rat, and too small. _Just a radroach. Not enough to set off Camel's alarms. _It scuttled away into the dark as they approached.

At the ten mile mark, she stopped in a generator bay that marked an intersection with a parallel train track. She had a drink of water and a small meal. Xen knew the chain link fence and gate across the bay was no real protection, but she felt better with it there. Someone had left an old magazine called _Guns and Bullets _lying on the bay's small table_. _Xen sat in the dusty old chair and read it as she ate. The pages crackled as she turned them, but it was still legible. She stuffed it into Camel's net before they went on.

By fifteen miles her calves and thighs ached, her feet were starting to hurt, and her eyes were beginning to water from the strain of staring into dark corners and squinting at stuttering lights. She'd had to put her goggles back on so that she could keep her inside lids open as the ambient light level increased. "Not long now," she whispered, partly to the packbot but mostly to herself. But it seemed like forever. She scrambled over increasingly numerous piles of rubble, trying to avoid cutting or scratching herself on jagged bits of wire.

At last she felt the draft of cool air on her face that meant Museum Station was up ahead, and in the distance she saw the tunnel open out into a wider space. She stood for a second with a hand on top of Camel's chassis, resting as she listened. It would be ridiculous to walk so far and then be killed because she was too tired to pay attention.

Water was dripping somewhere. That was all she heard.

"I don't see anything unusual," she said to Camel. "Run an active scan for heat signatures."

"Running active scan," said Camel. "Scan negative. Negative for power signatures of sufficient size to be robotic also."

Xen raised her scanty eyebrows at the packbot. "Did you just use initiative?"

"I anticipated your response based on previous command patterns," said Camel. "This is within the parameters of my artificial intelligence."

"Interesting," said Xen. "All right. Let's go."

There wasn't much color to be seen in Museum Station. The gray concrete was covered with brownish-gray debris and brown or gray scraps of litter. Even the plastic on the defunct escalator in front of her was faded from black to gray. Her thermal vision showed the bulky masses of concrete as all the same temperature, an enormous cool mass against which any living thing would light up like a rocket. The ambient radiation was merely normal background; there were no Feral Ghouls up ahead.

Dust motes swirled in the diffuse light. Xen looked around the big space, alert for sudden movements, but everything was still. A great platform stood on pillars above the sets of train tracks, reached by escalators on each side. Dead trains hulked in a couple of the tunnels, blank-eyed with their dark windows. Any way to the surface must be up the stairs. Xen turned toward the escalator and start up, stifling a groan at the effect this had on her sore thighs. She didn't want to touch the dirty railing.

At the top she paused gratefully, panting, then turned to the left toward the darker entryway. She passed the empty ticket kiosk and rows of stone benches. Her feet kicked up dust among the discarded slips of paper and litter, and she tried and failed to stifle a sneeze. Xen froze, scanning all around her with trembling attention. Nothing happened.

"Scans still show negative," reported Camel. Her vocal range did not allow for tonal changes, but Xen blushed anyway. She moved forward quickly, looking for the exit. It was through a set of steel ticket gates and around a corner. There she had to close her inner eyelids against the glare from the chain-link fence and gate that separated the inside of the Station from the stairwell that led up to the Mall.

"One heat signature overhead," said Camel as they approached the gate. "Size consistent with a human or Ghoul female."

Xen tugged at the chain gate until it popped open, then hauled back until there was an opening big enough to admit the packbot. She slid in behind, and then they were in the stairwell.

"Hello?" she said loudly.

Footsteps approached, booted feet on the sidewalk above. A shape appeared at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the blinding sky.

"Hi there, Tourist," said a voice. It was about the right range for a woman, but rough and scratchy, as if there were dust in the modulator.

_This is an organic person, _Xen reminded herself. _It's from vocal cord damage. She must be a Ghoul._

"Tourist?" she said.

"Sure," said the woman. "You're here on the Mall to see the sights, right? We don't get many smoothskins through here."

"I guess I am," said Xen, filing the term _smoothskin_. "Which way to Underworld?"

The woman gestured. "Through the main doors and look for the big skull. You can't miss it."

"Thanks," said Xen.

"See you around, Sightseer," she said, and vanished from view. Xen dragged herself up the stairs and stood looking around. She was just in time to see the woman's back vanishing around the corner of a building. She stood in a little courtyard bordered on three sides by walls. The fourth side, beyond the stairwell down to the Station, opened out into an enormous open space. The bare dirt was dug up into trenches, some of them lined with barbed wire or with boards laid across the top. And walking about among them she saw...

"Super mutants," Xen whispered. She knew by rights she should be terrified, but she had never seen one outside of pictures before. Ten feet tall, bald, and sour-apple green wherever skin showed on their bulging muscle-bound bodies, they were impossible to misidentify. Most wore crude armor made from old tires or scavenged from car bodies. The nearest was hundreds of yards away and evidently didn't see her. Xen turned slowly and carefully to look at the building behind her. Tattered banners many times her height swung from the stone front of the Museum of History. It must have been white when it was built. The dust of ages had rendered it a dirty gray. She went to push open one of the heavy main doors.

The first part of the lobby was a square chamber with a low ceiling. A double hemisphere of counters stood in the middle, with broken computers set at intervals around the surface. There were restrooms off to the left. She had to step around fallen marble pillars to move into the larger space beyond.

The inner lobby was wide, high, and empty of life. Here the light was dim enough that she could open up behind her glasses again, as long as she didn't look directly at the fires burning in their small biers to either side of the door. Bones that she recognized as belonging to an extinct prehistoric predator lay fallen and scattered off to her right. A full-sized replica of an elephantine mammal loomed on a platform to the left, a hairy thing with enormous tusks. Xen pressed on across the scuffed marble floor toward the other end of the great room. A high fresco of molded gray material covered most of the far wall. It formed an enormous skull in the center. The other portions were more abstract. An arch with the words _Underworld Journey_ hung under the fresco and over the double doors.

Behind the doors themselves, heat bloomed bright and frequently. _Those must be the Ghouls. _There was one signature with a little more of a chemical aura to it, flickering here and there with exhaust. _A robot. From the shape, I think I know what kind._

"Do you see it, Camel?" she asked. "Is it a Mister Handy?"

"The model is a combat-modified version called a Mister Gutsy," said Camel.

"Oh. Yes, I've seen pictures." _And he can probably see us through the doors, too, so it's no surprise he's coming this way._

She hauled the big door open slowly and stepped inside. The inner space was torchlit, requiring some adjustment before her eyes could truly focus. Black marble pillars lined the walls, holding up the long balcony that nearly circled the room. There were benches on the floors, and black-and-yellow banners that said _Underworld _on them. An enormous sculpture, black and forbidding, squatted at the other end of the long room. And all around were Ghouls, dressed in ordinary clothing and walking around and talking. Some of them turned to stare at the small greenish-white invader.

_I must look very strange to them. After all, I've seen pictures of Ghouls. They've never seen pictures of a Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid. _She stifled an exhausted laugh at this thought. It was warm here, and there was a faint whiff of corruption in the air. It was overwhelming to see so many people in one place, beyond anything she had imagined.

"Atten-shun! Civilian on deck!" snapped the robot. Its voice was male. Xen forced herself to concentrate on the hovering green chassis. It reminded her a lot of Tori, except that it was painted green with a white star over the original metal.

"Hello," she said. "I'm Xen."

"I am Cerberus! It is my solemn duty to guard the citizens of Underworld against any and all threats, both foreign and domestic!"

"And this is Underworld?" Xen said. She was aware that it was a stupid question, but now more Ghouls were staring at her, and she was starting to feel nervous.

"This is a town of peace-loving Ghouls, so check your bigotry at the door," said the robot. "They deserve the same love and respect as any human, and don't you forget it!"

"All right," said Xen, a little puzzled as to why he was calling her a bigot. Had she violated some unspoken local rule?

"At least, that's what they programmed me to say," Cerberus went on as if she hadn't spoken. "Personally, I think they're a bunch of rotting zombie maggot farms, and I'd send them all back to Hell if I could. Damn, this combat inhibitor!"

This was somewhat more familiar territory. "It seems to conflict with one of your base imperatives," said Xen. "Who installed it?"

"Winthrop," said the robot. "He's the one in the jumpsuit over there. Don't let him send you looking for scrap metal. Damn zombies."

"Is there somewhere here I can sleep for the night?" Xen asked.

"Carol's Place," said Cerberus. "Upstairs. People sleep at the 9th Circle, too. Well, if you count passing out on the floor as sleeping. Was that all?"

"Yes," said Xen reluctantly. "Thank you."

"Closing dialogue system," said Cerberus, and drifted off, muttering to himself. Xen watched him go. Robots were familiar. Now she would have to deal with organic people, without Tori to protect and interpret for her. _Tomorrow. _She turned toward the stairway. She was too tired to stare at everyone the way they were staring at her. She would have to look for information later.

"He seemed a little odd," she said to Camel once they were on the balcony.

"The standard Robco Mister Gutsy model was prone to certain idiosyncrasies," said Camel. "Cerberus is likely a very old individual."

"How do you know?" said Xen.

"I have detailed files on the history of robotics along with the other information you uploaded," said Camel. Xen made her way slowly along the balcony, trying not to look bigoted.

"Oh."

"Your memory is not functioning optimally due to fatigue," said Camel. "We should find a place for you to rest."

"I don't remember _that _in your set of responses," said Xen. "Tori and Bunni added some things to you, didn't they."

"I have been instructed not to disclose the extent of modifications."

"I'm not surprised," said Xen dryly. "I _can _change that, you know."

"Affirmative," said Camel. "Given the proper equipment. Unfortunately, you did not equip me with a sophisticated enough artificial intelligence to interpret verbal overwrites of my base programming."

"Why am I only hearing about this now?" She could see a doorway at the end of the balcony, leading to another upstairs area. Nearer at hand was a set of double doors with a crudely lettered sign that said _The 9__th__ Circle_.

"I was instructed not to inform you unless asked."

"Hm." Xen glanced at the door, read the few heat signatures behind it, and kept going. She hadn't really understood Cerberus's reference to passing out on the floor, but it didn't sound very safe.

The open area had another set of doors to the 9th Circle. Opposite it was an identical pair labeled _Carol's Place. _A Ghoul in a pair of pink pajamas lounged against the wall outside, smoking. Unlike the others she'd seen, he had a full head of white hair slicked into a ducktail. He stared at Xen as she went past and into Carol's Place.

A counter stretched across the alcove in front of her. Xen was not quite tall enough to set her elbows on it. A Ghoul in a prewar dress with rolled-up sleeves and a neat little collar sat at a computer behind it. She didn't seem to notice Xen.

"Hello," said Xen.

"Yeah, what is it," she started to say, and then she actually looked up. She jumped up, heat blooming across her face in sudden embarrassment. "Oh. Someone new! I'm sorry, you must think me terribly rude. Welcome. I'm Carol."

"I'm Xen."

"Greta will get you any food you want, and I handle the rooms," said Carol. She brushed a straggly wisp of blond hair back from her face. It grew in a few thin clumps on her scalp. Xen tried not to stare at the exposed muscle and the dark veins on her neck and cheeks where the skin had dried up and flaked away. What skin she had looked like parchment, stiff and dry. Xen could actually identify the edges of the nasal bones around the hole where her nose had once been. She wanted to ask if it hurt, but apparently people were very sensitive to anything that might be taken as an insult here.

"How much is a room?" asked Xen.

"Huh? Oh... 120 caps, I guess," said Carol, blinking her red eyes, and Xen realized she had been staring in turn. "But are... are you sure you want to stay? You're looking a little green. Some smoothskins don't handle the smell very well."

Xen smiled up at the other woman. "I always look like this," she said. "I'm just not very healthy."

"Is that why you're wearing sunglasses inside?" asked Carol.

"My eyes are sensitive," said Xen. She could have done without the goggles in this warm, dim place, but then she would have to keep her inner lids closed. Either way, it seemed a bad idea to let strangers see her so-obviously-inhuman eyes. She turned to Camel to dig out the 120 caps. Tori had divided their store into bags containing 500 cap increments scattered throughout the luggage, so that it wouldn't be obvious how much she was carrying. She counted out the bottle caps as quickly as she could and deposited them carefully on the counter.

"Poor thing," said Carol. She scooped the money and deposited it in an ancient cash register. "It's right over there. The middle room."

"Thank you," said Xen. She turned to the left and went around the corner into a larger space. There was a small, round table with an ash tray sitting on it and a single chair. It reeked of something chemical and strange as she passed. She tried not to breathe it in. To call the areas for rent _rooms _was an exaggeration. The beds were separated only by translucent plastic screens set up between them. A bench lined the only free wall space. Currently a Ghoul in a suit sat there. He held a cylinder of white paper in two of his fingers. It gave off a wisp of gray smoke. _A cigarette, _Xen realized. _People still __smoke tobacco out here. _Xen, who had spent most of her life alone with two robots, didn't want to change her clothes in front of the stranger. Instead, she lay down fully clothed on top of the covers. Camel hovered at the end of the bed.

"Wake me up if anyone tries to bother us," said Xen.

"Acknowledged," said Camel.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: I'm afraid I've fudged the chronology with TFW: Thistle here a little. That is, I haven't actually accounted for enough time (so this story is probably compressed by a few months)._

10

Xen woke up feeling stiff and sore. There was a clotted, thick feeling in the back of her throat. She coughed, wondering why it smelled so bad in the Lab. She hadn't been planning to dissect anything...

She squinted her eyes open and immediately scissored her inner lids closed. The light went from painfully bright to warm and dim. Xen fumbled under the pillow for her goggles and put them on. She lay on her side, looking at the translucent, cloudy surface of a plastic divider. _Underworld. I made it. _

That made her feel a little better during the subsequent five minutes, which she spent sitting on the edge of the bed, coughing. She tried to keep it as quiet as possible. It wasn't the fault of whoever-it-was that she was evidently allergic to cigarette smoke. Camel didn't try to give her an epinephrine stim. The fact that she was coughing meant her air passage was still clear.

Finally, she managed to get upright. She staggered over and dug a bottle of water out of the net that dangled from the packbot's three arms. A drink washed the foul taste from her mouth, and she felt a little better.

"Camel," she said. "How long did I sleep?"

"Nine hours," said the packbot.

Xen sighed. She'd hoped to be awake sooner. But then, she could have told the packbot to wake her. She took another drink and put the bottle away. "All right. Let's go down to the restrooms."

With her muscles stiff and uncooperative, it took longer than usual to get through her morning routine. She washed herself as best she could at the sink, with her goggles off and her eyes closed. She changed her clothes in a stall and gave the dirty ones to Camel to clean. The bot laid down her cargo net near Xen as she went to work at a sink.

Xen kept an eye on Camel and the luggage through a crack between the stall door and the doorpost. A couple of Ghoul women stared at the packbot as they performed their own ablutions, but no one said anything. As she brushed her thin hair, Xen tried to concentrate on her plans for the day. She was hungry. There were benches outside where she could sit. Maybe after she ate, she would be able to think of a way to get the information she needed. She was feeling strangely reluctant to just choose a person and talk to them.

No one had been rude to her. In fact, for what her research said was an oppressed minority, they seemed very tolerant of her presence. But everyone looked at her when they thought she wasn't looking. It made her feel hot and uncomfortable, as if her skin were too small for her. She wasn't able to enjoy the fascinating array of variations on display as much as she'd hoped. Some Ghouls were even walking around with exposed spinal vertebrae, something an ordinary human could never survive. _But then, they're not vulnerable to ordinary diseases, so infection isn't a risk._

Camel dried the clothes surprisingly quickly by holding them up in front of her exhaust ports. Xen shook them out, folded them, and packed them when she had finished with her hair. Camel took up the net and cargo easily.

"Have you done your 24 hour diagnostic yet?" Xen asked.

"Affirmative. All systems are performing optimally."

"Good," Xen said. "Continue diagnostics and report any anomalies. You're doing great so far."

She ate her breakfast sitting on the only vacant bench outside. Ghouls looked at her sometimes, but no one sat down beside her. _Would it have been like this all the time, if I had grown up around humans?_ Xen wondered._ If the Doctors had decided to keep me, and if they had lived?_

_But then, these people just think I'm a sick-looking human, someone who'll look down on them because their skin falls off. Imagine if they knew what I _really _am._

Well, at least there was no chance anyone would guess. Xen looked around for inspiration. There was a sign above a door nearby. It said _Underworld Outfitters._ That seemed as good a place to start as any. Xen disposed of her packaging in the nearest trash can (she wondered who emptied them) and went inside.

Shelves lined the walls, stacked up with ammunition, weapons, and various objects. A light-skinned Ghoul stared at her across a counter that held a cash register and a computer terminal.

"A customer!" she said. She wore a cropped denim jacket that showed her peeling abdominal muscles. "I don't see many new faces around here. Especially not smoothskins."

"So I hear," said Xen.

"I'm Tulip. What brings you to Underworld?"

"I want to go to a place in the North," said Xen. The stranger hadn't asked her name, so she didn't give it. "I was hoping to find someone who could tell me about the route."

"Oh. No, I can't help you there. I haven't been out of town in ages." Tulip stared at her frankly. "Are you going to be sick?"

"No, I always look this way," said Xen. "Do you know who could tell me?"

"Not really. Most of us don't get out much, and the ones who really travel are all out of town now. You just missed Thistle. I think she went with Fawkes and that clone to see if she could get work from the Brotherhood of Steel. To be honest," Tulip said, and hesitated.

"What?" Xen asked.

"I kind of thought you might be here for Charon."

"Who's that?" Xen asked.

"He's the bouncer up at the 9th Circle. Ahzrukhal's been saying he's willing to sell his contract, if somebody comes along with enough caps. I'd buy it myself, even, but Ahz wouldn't sell to me. He knows I want him dead."

This didn't make very much sense to Xen, but it seemed an avenue worth pursuing. "Do you know how much he wants?" she asked.

"A couple of thousand caps, probably. Charon's worth more than just a slave."

"I see," said Xen, who didn't. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," said Tulip. "Be careful out there. You look kind of young to be out on your own."

"I'm older than I look," said Xen. This, technically speaking, was true. Camel followed her back out onto the concourse. She bit her lip on a groan as she struggled up the stairs. Every muscle felt like a band of sun-rotted plastic, stiff and brittle. _It will take me a long time to get to the crash site if I feel like this every morning, _she thought. _One thing at a time._

"Buying an adult male slave is not an optimal solution," said Camel. "Particularly one with physical combat training. If he intended you harm, it is possible he would be able to deactivate me before I could kill him."

"That would take very unusual reflexes, for a human," said Xen. "And you're advising without being asked again. Are you going to do that a lot?"

"I have been instructed to attempt to verbally prevent you from taking unnecessary risks."

"Anyway, I'm not planning to buy him," Xen said. "I don't know that he'd be able to guide us North if I did."

"You do not require a guide. I have the necessary geographic information."

"But you don't know anything about local conditions," said Xen. "That's the problem. What if we run into some kind of creature I don't have documentation for?"

"Then I will shoot it," said Camel.

"That's a logic error, and you know it. I know the power level on your laser," Xen pointed out. "It's not enough to take down a deathclaw with one shot unless you get it right through the eyeball. And if you are destroyed, I'll be alone without a way to navigate or carry the things that I can't live without. We could use a disposable backup."

"Your argument contains an inherent biologically-derived reasoning error," said Camel.

"You mean a wetware logic malfunction," said Xen. "All right, I _know _you got that from Tori."

"You will not regard a slave as disposable for more than the first few days. If he does not attempt to attack us, you will form an interpersonal affinity for this person which will make it difficult, if not impossible, for you to sacrifice him."

"You can't know that," said Xen. "Maybe I won't like him. And I'm not going get all hormonal over a male _Ghoul _just because I haven't been around boys."

"It is not sexual attraction to which I refer. You are barely post-adolescent. You have largely human instincts but limited human contact to date," said the packbot. "You will form attachments easily with any degree of proximity over time. Already you would regret it if it became necessary for me to destroy Cerberus."

"That's not true," said Xen, and was aware that her darkening complexion was proving her a liar. "Well, all right, it _is _true, but only because he reminds me of Tori."

Camel remained silent. The packbot had no face to speak of, nor any feature capable of conveying smugness, but Xen read it all the same.

"I'm going to find out about this," said Xen. "I can't operate under an information deficit. Just follow me, watch for overt threats, and try to refrain from being overly helpful."

"Acknowledged," said Camel.

Xen bit her tongue and turned to walk on. She knew a fair number of obscene or profane words. The ones Tori and Bob Masterson didn't use were in computer records she'd read. She just wasn't used to using them. After all, Bunni never had. And the only time she'd heard one of the Doctors swear was just before they both died.

She pushed open the door to the 9th Circle and went inside.

A second later she stepped quickly out again, feeling the unmistakable sensation of her throat swelling shut. "Epi," she croaked, and slapped her left palm over one of Camel's joints. She felt a tiny jab. Her heart rate jumped as the adrenaline shot through her circulatory system. Her throat cleared, leaving her shaky and weak. She leaned against the wall and coughed.

"Visual on the interior indicates this is a tavern or drinking establishment," said Camel. "Cigarette smoking by several patrons at once is very common under such circumstances."

"Could've said that earlier," Xen said over the pounding in her ears. She held her palm against the seam of her jeans to hide the color of her blood.

"You did not ask," said Camel. "It is probable that the CNS overstimulation resulting from the epinephrine dose will impair your judgment. You should remain out here."

Xen stared at the packbot. She hovered silently in place, impassive as ever.

"Give me a gel dot," she said finally. "Then run silent until told to speak." She was angry, but even under a forced adrenaline rush, she could stay on top of that. A lifetime of training had taught her that there was nothing to be gained by ranting at an inorganic person. Probably under Tori's instructions to protect her from harm, Camel was trying to manipulate her by exploiting her emotional responses. Therefore, she would not reveal any emotional response. The physiological temperature change that came with anger was another thing, of course, but that would be masked by the fever-heat generated by her response to the adrenaline. She was already sweating under her clothes.

"Acknowledged," said Camel. The bot rotated to expose another leg. A tiny bead of cloudy blue gel appeared at a pinprick hole in the knobby joint. Xen pressed her hand over it, then shook it quickly to encourage the gel to dry. She couldn't bleed to death through such a small hole, but the thin hemolymph that served her for blood would not clot quickly. She would continue to bleed for a long time, and the epinephrine would exacerbate rather than help that.

"Stay here unless I call you," said Xen. She took a ragged breath and turned to go back into the 9th Circle.


	11. Chapter 11

11

The fug of cigarette smoke was just as bad this time. Xen felt a slight return of the fuzzy feeling in her throat, but she was breathing shallowly now. Besides, her anaphylactic response was almost totally crippled by the epinephrine. _And will be until it wears off. _She looked around. A long bar stretched across the wall opposite her. There were shelves lined with bottles and glasses behind it. There was an old refrigerator, and a safe built into the wall in plain sight. A yellowish Ghoul in a prewar pinstripe suit stood there. Beside him, a radio talked in a loud, cheerful voice about Project Purity.

Xen forced herself to take a slow, careful breath, hoping to prevent the dizziness from getting worse. There were a few tables near her. Three or four Ghouls, dreadfully thin and reeking of ethanol and chemicals she couldn't identify, slouched in the seats. Most showed no interest in her. She had a hard time focusing on individual objects in front of her, wanting to jump from heat signature to heat signature; and then she had to resist the impulse to stare for minutes at the blue glow on the front of the safe. _Perceptual malfunctions. Work around them._

The man behind the bar was watching her closely. She felt other eyes on her as well. Xen turned to see another Ghoul standing in the corner of the room.

He was _big. _Xen was abstractly aware that humans of both sexes came in a variety of sizes. She had thought Masterson was on the larger end of the curve. Evidently some statistical reevaluation was in order. This one must be a good foot and a half taller than Xen; he was certainly a head taller than the bartender.

His clothing was leather, darkened by use rather than dye. It was all cracks and stains. There were rusty buckles on his knee-length boots and rusty steel pauldrons strapped to his shoulders. A matching bracer covered his right forearm. Four straps connected to a metal ring in the center of his chest. She assumed they were there to hold up the weapon on his back. A sheath as long as her forearm was strapped to his left thigh.

She looked at his face. Even before he was a Ghoul, he could not have been an attractive man. He had a flattish head and a big lower jaw. Most of his skin loss seemed to be below the cheekbones. She could see a stringy tendon on one side. He looked at her under his heavy eyelids for a second, then resumed scanning the bar in silence. Xen almost giggled as she recognized the behavior: _Threat assessment complete. No threat detected. Resuming scan._ He was right about that. Xen felt a faint, chilly qualm as she approached the bar, but it quickly melted in the heat pounding through her veins.

"Well, now, lookee here," the bartender said. "We got us a smoothskin I ain't never seen before. I'm Ahzrukhal, and this... This is the Ninth Circle."

"This is a tavern?" Xen said.

"Folks got problems, and I got liquor to sell to 'em... well, liquor and a few other pick-me-ups. You need anything, you just let me know." He eyed her with a small smile. He didn't have much in the way of lips. Blue-black muscle showed where the skin should be.

"No, thanks," said Xen. She had been firmly assured that alcohol would make her instantly and violenty ill, and while she was curious about whatever the other patrons were using, she had no desire whatsoever to try it. _Especially not on top of the epinephrine. _"Who is that in the corner?"

"That's Charon. Let's just say... well, he's a loyal employee," said Ahzrukhal.

"You mean a slave," Xen said.

"Ma'am, you insult me," said Ahzrukhal. "I do not believe in slavery. It is an abomination." The Ghoul's diction seemed to have changed suddenly, although there was no temperature rise to indicate real anger. _He's pretending_. Xen blinked behind her goggles.

"I apologize," she said. "I didn't mean to be offensive."

"Charon made some choices that landed him in my employ."

"So what did you mean when you said he's a loyal employee?" Xen asked.

"I hold his contract, which makes me his employer. He will do what I ask when I ask, without question." Ahzrukhal leaned both palms on the bar. "You see, Charon grew up around a very interesting group of individuals. They... well, I guess you could say that they brainwashed him. He is absolutely loyal to whomever holds his contract." He smiled tightly with his lipless mouth. "Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that he holds no end of animosity towards me. But so long as he is my employee, he is as gentle as a teddy bear."

"He'll do whatever his contract holder says?" said Xen, puzzling over a couple of odd word choices. She couldn't place Ahzrukhal's syntax.

"Given one or two small caveats, yes," said Ahzrukhal.

Xen looked from Ahzrukhal to the big Ghoul in the corner. He would certainly have had ample opportunities to harm the smaller man. And she had seen no change in Ahzrukhal's temperature profile that would indicate he was lying.

"If I bought his contract, he would protect me?" she asked.

"Oh, certainly," said Ahzrukhal. "Unfailing, unflinching, until the day his employment ends. There've been plenty of times when he could've offed me with nobody the wiser, believe you me. The person who holds Charon's contract is the one person who will always be safe from Charon. And most other things, too. You point at something, Charon hurts it."

"Will you sell the contract?" Xen asked.

"What do you have in mind?" Ahzrukhal asked. "Charon is a highly valuable asset to me and to the 9th Circle."

"I'll give you two thousand caps," said Xen. "If you let me read the contract first."

"Let's see the money before I agree to that," said Ahzrukhal.

"I'll get it," said Xen. She went out to the packbot, taking a deep lungful of cleaner air as she did it, and collected four of the bags of caps to take back with her. Her hands shook slightly. She tried not to reveal this as she carried them back and set them on the bar.

"You can count them while I read it," she said.

"I suppose that could work... Yes. Here's the contract." He handed over a yellowed piece of paper. Xen read the closely-written typescript, squinting through her goggles. The paper glowed slightly above normal background radiation, evidence of its being in a Ghoul's possession for some time, but it wasn't enough to be a threat to her health.

"_These _are his operating parameters?" she said out loud. "Really?"

"That's a funny way of putting it, but yes," said Ahzrukhal. "The money's all here, so it's all yours. I'll give you the pleasure of informing Charon yourself." He whisked the bags out of sight behind the bar. Xen took the contract and went back to the corner. The big Ghoul watched her approach with no sign of interest.

"Charon?" she said.

"Talk to Ahzrukhal," he said, and resumed scanning the bar. His irises were dull red, like every other Ghoul she had seen. His skin tone was darker and less yellow than the bartender's; the overall impression was of dusty red and tan.

"I bought your contract," said Xen. She held up the piece of paper. Charon's eyes snapped back to her instantly. "I'm your new employer."

"You purchased my contract from Ahzrukhal?" he said slowly. His face showed no emotion, but his temperature shot upward as she watched. Xen nodded, started to feel dizzy, and stopped. "So, I am no longer in his service. Dat is good to know. Please, wait here. I must take care of something."

Xen watched in total puzzlement as he walked past her without another word. Under the typical Ghoul vocal damage, his accent was even stranger than Ahzrukhal's. She held the contract carefully with slightly numb fingers. Charon moved with a firm solidity to his steps, a mechanical sense of purpose that was very familiar. He walked up to the bar and looked down at his former employer.

"Ahzrukhal. I'm told dat I am no longer in your service," he said.

"That's right, Charon," said Ahzrukhal. He made a short, sharp sound that might be mistaken for a laugh. "Have you come to say goodbye?"

"Yes," said Charon. He whipped the gun off his back and pulled the trigger almost at the same time. Xen flinched from the blaze of heat and light, then stumbled as she lost her balance. She steadied herself against the wall. When she opened her eyes, blinking against the painful afterimage, she could no longer see Ahzrukhal. There was a splatter of blood and what she recognized as bits of brain matter against the wall and the safe. A moment later she caught the excremental stink of human death. She closed her eyes as Charon fired again. She fumbled her way toward the door, jerked it open, and lunged out onto the balcony. She leaned back against the wall with her eyes tightly shut. It took every ounce of self-discipline not to vomit. _Red blood wicking up the sleeve of Dr. Montalban's lab coat.._

Her heart pounded harder in her ears. She wondered if she would burst a blood vessel. Would it be a small one, blinding one of her eyes for weeks? Or a large one, ending her journey instantly as she bled out in this strange place far from home? There was nothing Camel could do about that, nothing at all...

Booted feet approached. They stopped. She felt the heat of a large body, a signature she was already beginning to recognize. Xen opened her eyes and looked up at Charon as she heard the sound of Camel's laser powering up. He still held his gun in both hands. Up close, she recognized it as some sort of combat shotgun, with a metal drum for ammunition in front of the short stock. The barrel radiated several degrees higher than his body.

"Physical violence on your part will invalidate our contract," Charon said calmly.

"Camel, don't shoot Charon," she said faintly. Her voice sounded hoarse and far away. "Charon, don't shoot the packbot, either."

"Acknowledged," said Camel.

"I unnerstand," said Charon. The consonant _d _seemed to get lost somewhere. He replaced the shotgun on his back easily.

"Why did you kill him?" Xen asked.

"Ahzrukhal was an evil bastard," said Charon. "So long as he held my contract, I was honor bound to do as he commanded. But now you are my employer, which freed me to rid the world of dat disgusting rat. And now, for good or ill, I serve you."

"Are you going to kill me if I sell your contract?" Xen asked. She still held the paper in one hand, though it had crumpled slightly in her convulsive grip.

"I have no reason to do dat at this time," said Charon.

"I see." Charon watched the piece of paper closely as she held it out toward Camel. Her hand was still shaking. Worse, if anything. "Scan this into main memory. This is Charon's contract. Acknowledge receipt."

"Acknowledged," said Camel. "Secondary programming requires me to inform you that it is highly unlikely a human being would voluntarily adhere to this."

"'M not int'rested in your secondary programming," said Xen. She refolded the paper and put it into a bundle of clothing, where it would be padded. "'Leave Charon alone unless he tries t'kill me." Her lips tingled slightly, slurring her speech. _Can't be happening again already._ "Run firs' aid subroutine."

Camel hummed as her sensor light blinked twice. "Your core temperature is falling," said Camel. "The epinephrine prevents severe imbalance of your circulation, or you would be at risk for death from shock. Exposing yourself to further allergic stimuli and an additional psychological trauma was foolish. It is likely you will lose consciousness shortly."

"Do you require a doctor?" Charon asked.

"No d'r," said Xen. "Back t'Carol's. Don' let anyone -"

She had planned to say more than that, but just then everything got very cold, and then it was dark.

Light shining through her eyelids woke her. She started to open her eyes, winced at the blinding glare, and quickly shut them again. _My goggles are off, _she realized after a second. She fumbled at her neck until she located the strap and pulled them back up. Her fingers felt thick and slow, and her throat hurt. Had she had an allergy attack while she slept? That hadn't happened in a very long time. It was strange that Bunni had turned the Lab's lights up, too. She was too tired to think about it. A moment later she was gone again.

The second time, she woke up with her mind a little clearer. She felt at her face to make sure the goggles were on before she opened her eyes. A pair of legs in dark leather pants obstructed her view of the plastic divider. She rolled onto her back slowly. This gave her an excellent view of Charon looking impassively down at her. "Oh," she said. "That _did _happen."

Xen sat up. She was still tired and achy, but she recognized this as an aftereffect of epinephrine plus residual muscle stiffness. Camel hovered at the end of the bed.

"How long was I out, Camel?" she asked. Her throat was still hoarse. _Not surprising._

"Approximately ten hours," said Camel. Xen looked back at Charon.

"How did I get here?"

"I carried you," said Charon. "As per your orders."

"Oh. I remember." She pulled her hair out of the rubber band and shook it loose, then combed her fingers through it before putting it up again. "I'll have to pay Carol for another night. Charon, would you do that? There's money in the smaller bag there." She waved vaguely at Camel. "Hand me a bottle of water first."

"Iddis what you wish of me," said Charon. Xen drank thirstily while he was gone. Camel apparently had nothing to say. Xen supposed that she would be quick to inform her if Charon had done anything threatening while she was asleep. Assuming the laser going off didn't wake her, that was.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Xen thought about her plans while Charon was gone. If he was unable to disobey orders, and he'd been in Ahzrukhal's employ for a long time, he probably didn't know much about the Wasteland outside. _Well, at least I'll have a large person with a shotgun. He should be useful if I can afford his upkeep._ She realized suddenly that she had packed her current food allowance with only herself in mind. It would last her for several weeks. _But he's probably close to twice my mass. I'll have to see that he gets enough. _She stood up slowly, stretching. She was still thinking about this when she heard the clockwork-regular footsteps returning.

"Charon," she said. "What's your daily calorie intake?"

"I will eat whatever I am given," he said.

"Input/output error," Xen said, and realized as she said it that this probably would not make sense to the Ghoul. _Don't keep thinking of him as a fleshy robot. This is a fully organic person. _"That's not what I asked. I need you able to protect me if my robot can't. Therefore, I need an estimate of what will keep you in good working order."

The Ghoul quoted a number. Xen winced internally. "All right," she said. "We'll see that you get it. I'm going to eat something, so you might as well, too." As usual after an allergy attack followed by an epinephrine dose, she was ravenously hungry. _I'm sure the post-traumatic flashback was a factor as well. _She had only had them once or twice, mostly when she was very small. But then, the last time she'd seen someone killed was when she was ten years old, and then there hadn't been much left of the body. _I never knew the man's name._

_...And Charon doesn't know mine, either. He never asked, and I never told._

"Camel, how many people are in earshot right now?" Xen asked as she dug through the food supplies, checking calorie counts on the packages. She handed three of them to Charon. "Here, eat these."

"Three," said Camel.

"Charon, where can we talk and not be heard?"

"Out in the lobby," he said, already opening a package. He didn't quite lose the beginning _th _in _the._

"All right. After we eat, I'm going to the restroom. You do whatever you need to do to get ready for a long walk. Then we'll go out there."

"Unnerstood," said Charon.

Half an hour later, they were out in the cavernous main lobby. Xen leaned against the wall behind the mammoth. "Camel, is anyone in earshot now?"

"Negative," said Camel.

"All right. Charon, I am going to tell you something you can't tell anyone else - "

"I strongly advise against proceeding," said Camel. Charon looked at the packbot with a thoughtful expression.

"Didn't I tell you not to give advice?" Xen said. She turned to look at the packbot in sudden realization. "You shouldn't even be _able _to disobey a direct order. You don't have a turret-level AI at all, do you? In fact..." She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose below her goggles. A headache was starting somewhere behind her eyes. "You're a copy of Tori, aren't you. She just left you the voice modulation I gave you. It's the only thing that explains your behavior."

There was a moment's silence. Then the packbot said, "Affirmative."

"I thought she took it too well when I left without them," Xen said. "Bunni's not sneaky enough to come up with that. Tori must've uploaded you after the last time I took you out. You had the turret AI right up until that point."

"Dis is a problem?" Charon said. The missing _th _was very evident this time, as he spoke with slightly more emphasis. He did not reach for the shotgun, but he was watching the robot very closely. _And I've seen how fast he can draw._

"It shouldn't be," said Xen. "She shouldn't be able to attack you against my direct order, unless you're acting as an immediate physical threat. Right, Tori?"

"That is correct," said the robot. "But I am not Tori. I do not have her personality files, only the base programming of her artificial intelligence and significant portions of memory. My experience is already irrevocably divergent."

"I won't call you Camel," said Xen. "That's a name for the pet I built, and that's not what you are."

"Then you must choose another designation."

"All right," said Xen. "Recognize previous designation: Camel."

The robot's main sensor blinked off and on once. "Previous designation acknowledged. State the new designation now."

"Recognize new designation: Changeling," said Xen.

"New designation acknowledged. I still do not recommend you tell Charon what you were about to tell him."

"And you think that's important enough to override a base imperative," said Xen. "Why?"

"Any attempt to cut off my advisory system is a direct threat to your safety because it could prevent me from sharing vital information," said the newly-christened Changeling. Xen probably imagined that she sounded a little prim. "Therefore I cannot respond to such an order."

"Anyway, he's going to know," said Xen. "If he's going out into the Wastes with us, there's no way to stop him from finding out. There are things he might even _need_ to know."

"I cannot stop you," said Changeling.

"Fine." She turned back to Charon. "All right. I'm going to tell you something you can't tell anyone else. What I'm going to show you falls under that heading, too."

"Unnerstood," said Charon.

Xen pulled her goggles down around her neck, letting him see the black surface of her inner eyelids without the smoky lenses to hide them. "My full name is Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19. Call me Xen. My base genetic structure is about 70% human. The rest is from an alien creature whose DNA was harvested by my human genetic contributors. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Charon. He had no visible reaction to the information. Xen dared not open her inner lids without the goggles on, so she couldn't see his infrared signature any more.

Changeling knew this, of course.

"No temperature change," said the robot. "No other indicators of physiological activation."

"Really?" said Xen.

"Affirmative," said Changeling.

She'd expected _some _kind of reaction. Xen looked at Charon in silence for a minute, not quite sure how to go on. "Because of what I am, I have some medical differences from a human person," she said finally. "Changeling carries epinephrine for serious allergy attacks, so that shouldn't involve you. My eyes are very sensitive to a lot of wavelengths of light. This," she pointed to one eye, "is an inner eyelid. I can only open it behind my glasses or when it's dark. My blood is thin, and it won't clot as quickly as yours. I can still use stimpaks, but we need to conserve them, and it will take more of them to heal me. Avoiding injury is therefore a priority."

"I unnerstand," said Charon.

"This means I'll be asking you to do things that I might be able to do myself if they involve risk of small injuries. Will that be a problem?"

"I will obey your orders," said Charon.

"That's another i/o error," Xen said.

"It will not be a problem," said Charon. Xen looked at him for a moment. He looked back, eyes half-closed. _He understood what I meant by that the second time._

"No physiological activation," said Changeling. "He has no emotional response, or he is heavily conditioned enough not to respond physically. That is very uncommon in humans."

"But you _are _a very uncommon human," Xen said to Charon. She pulled her goggles back up and opened her inner lids. "Tell me what color the floor is."

"Black and white," said Charon. His temperature remained constant. He had gone back to scanning the lobby around them, evidently now convinced that Changeling was not an immediate concern of his.

"Now tell me it's red and green."

"Da floor is red and green," Charon said clearly. His body temperature did not change, not even in his lips and fingers, where increased circulation should give away even a seasoned liar with tiny blooms of warmth. All of her reading said this was true.

"Oh," said Xen.

"Humans with no physiological response to deliberate untruths are often abnormal psychologically," said Changeling. "This is consistent with our other data."

"But I _have _seen him show an emotional temperature change," said Xen. "Right before he killed his last employer."

"Excellent," said Changeling. "We will have some warning when he decides to kill you."

"Very funny," said Xen. "All right, this isn't getting us anywhere. Changeling, where do we go from here?"

"We will be safer underground than above," said Changeling. "My mapping indicates we will be able to travel well over half the distance via the Metro tunnels if we can clear obstructions in the tunnel."

"Project the map for me," said Xen.

Changeling rotated until her main sensor faced the wall. A map flickered to life on the chipped surface. Blinking red dots appeared at three different points. "The lower point is our current location in Washington, D.C.," said Changeling. "This one at the center is Northwest Seneca Station. The Northern dot represents our destination."

Xen looked at this thoughtfully. She became aware after a moment that Charon was looking at it also.

"That's still a long time aboveground," she said.

"Unavoidable," said Changeling. "My contour records indicate the terrain will be less level for the latter part of the journey as well."

"How far until we have to restock our current food supplies?"

"It is probable that we will be able to find prewar supplies throughout the tunnel system," said Changeling. "There will be potable water as well. Finding food will involve delay, but it is necessary if you intend to retain Charon. Shall I add to active search parameters?"

"Yes," said Xen. "We're not in such a hurry that I want to take additional risks."

"Bringing the Ghoul represents an additional risk," Changeling said.

"Your objection is noted." Xen shoved herself away from the wall, ignoring the protest of her sore muscles, and started for the lobby door.

She had to shut her inner lids tightly before it was halfway open, though she was not quite fast enough to avoid a sharp pain in her head. It was a bright day outside, the sky clear and blue. Xen looked away from it as she slipped outside. The Ghoul she had spoken to earlier stood near the subway entrance, watching them.

"Leaving us already, Tourist?" she asked. "Hey, looks like you bought Charon's contract. Smart move. Although we won't feel as safe without him around, I can tell you that."

"My name's actually Xen," said Xen. "Why would you feel less safe?"

"Him and Cerberus always kept us pretty secure, between them," said the Ghoul. "I'm Willow."

"Ahzrukhal cared about other people's security?" asked Xen.

Willow snorted, putting her hand on one hip above her holstered pistol. Peripherally, Xen was aware of Charon observing this closely. "I doubt it. But anybody shooting up Underworld would be bad for his business, you know? He has, like, a vested interest. Don't know what he's going to do for a bouncer now."

"I don't think that will be a problem," said Xen. "Bye, Willow."

"So long," said Willow.

Xen took a last long look at the Mall. The super mutants were still about their endless patrols, stumping between the trenches with heavy weapons in hand. None of them seemed to notice her. She turned and went down the stairs with the robot and the Ghoul following close behind.

"Changeling, run silent except for proximity warnings," said Xen. "Charon, be as quiet as you can. I want to avoid conflict if we can go around it instead."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling.

"If dat is your order," said Charon.

Xen pulled open the chain gate and stepped down into the Metro.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: An author's note on the things I've been researching in re: Charon's probable psychology would take up too much space here. I'm adding to the bottom of the lore section before Ch. 1 instead._

_I'm not sure why S&M clothing fans have to be chaotic evil in video games, particularly when the lighter forms are so common and popular among "normal" RL folks that they can barely be considered a paraphilia. I guess someone at BethSoft thought it wouldn't fit the vibe if that one lady in Megaton walked up to you wearing a mohawk, a spiky bandoleer and a steel colander over each boob going, "We saved our money and got you this gift. Thanks for doing what you do."_

13

Xen paused inside the chainlink door for a moment, letting her naked eyes adjust to the lower light behind her goggles. Nothing seemed to have changed. There was still a red Nuka-Cola machine amid the piles of dirt and debris, fizzling and sparking. She moved down the slope toward the main platform. She thought for a second that they'd already lost Charon, but when she looked over her shoulder, he was still there. His footsteps had become nearly silent, and his leather garments were worn enough that they didn't creak when he moved. He was looking around, but he hadn't drawn the shotgun.

She stopped at the broad doorway to allow Changeling past her. The packbot hovered over to the left escalator and waited. Xen followed her down, feeling the warmth of Charon's large body as he came after. Changeling led them to one of the side tunnels. The hulk of an old train occupied the center track. The corpse of the machine was long, leaving less room to walk, and the ground was uneven. Xen had to look mostly at her feet to avoid impaling herself on one of the protruding bits of sharp glass or rebar. She spared a glance for their forward trail as often as she could, watching for radiation or heat. If there was a rogue bot in the tunnel anywhere, Changeling would be better equipped to detect it than she would, of course. _I can't detect electromagnetic radiation from a heatless energy source. Maybe my third contributor could._

At this thought, she felt an old pang of loss. She'd never known him, not even his name. And surely his people would have given him a real name, not a numeric designation like hers. What parts of her were really his? Surely there must be something beyond the purely physical disadvantages and the insufficiently compensatory bonus to her vision (something likely to be equaled or outdone by any robot with a decent sensor suite). Had he argued with the computer of his ship? Had his own people (she would never know their name for themselves) thought of him as stubborn, or loyal, or intelligent, or thoughtful? Had he been clever at fixing things with his long-fingered green hands?

But she told herself, as she had since she was eleven, that if he had survived she would not exist. No creature would volunteer to have parts of themselves stripped out and shoved almost randomly into a genome alien to them. No parent would condone the agonies those earlier hybrids had suffered in their brief and awful lives.

Here she chided herself for being sentimental. The Doctors had condoned those things, and they _were _her parents. More than he was.

_I exist because he is dead. Therefore I must learn what I can in the only way available to me, _she thought, reminding herself again of the inevitable conclusion. _And then, when I have learned all that I can, I will decide what I'm going to be._

The train seemed unbelievably long as she crept through the echoing silence of the tunnel behind Changeling. Gradually she became aware of background noise – the crackle and hum of electricity through old wires, the gurgle of distant plumbing, and a gravel voice muttering very softly behind her. Xen glanced briefly back at Charon. His lips were moving, but the level of sound was so low she couldn't make out most of the words. He was still looking all around them with no sign of immediate alarm, so she assumed it wasn't to do with anything currently happening.

Then they rounded a gentle curve in the tunnel, and the end of the train came into view. It was jackknifed sideways in the tunnel so that it blocked the way forward. Just before the blockage was a door in the cement wall. A blue light hung above it, rotating rapidly so that it cast an irregular light on the dead train and the warped and dusty sidewalk.

The door was open. It was dark inside, and Xen felt the heat from living bodies.

Changeling slowed to a stop in front of her. Behind her, she heard Charon murmur,

"Dis place is not safe."

"Affirmative for heat signatures," Changeling vocalized quietly.

"I count four," Xen whispered. "Human-sized. No rads, so they're not Ghouls - "

She stopped, startled, as Charon brushed past. He padded toward the doorway in his leather boots, shotgun in hand.

"We don't know that they're hostile!" she hissed at Changeling.

"Apparently one of us does," said the robot.

"Found you," said Charon. He raised the shotgun and fired it into the dark doorway. One of the heat signatures changed position abruptly, and the scream that followed was obscenely loud in the echoing tunnel. Xen started forward, but the robot blocked her path, spreading out her arms to take up as much space as possible with the dangling cargo net. Charon vanished into the doorway.

"No, Xen," said Changeling. "It's too dangerous. If they're not hostile, you can't save them. And if they are, you'll be in his way. Wait."

The shotgun boomed again. Then she heard a scuffle of feet and swearing in a human voice:

"_Fuck. _He's got a knife, don't get - " There was another scream, then a wet gurgling noise that quickly trailed off. Then it was quiet. Xen stared at the wall, watching four horizontal heat signatures rapidly cooling toward the temperature of the cold concrete. One still stood, tall and implacable. As she watched it faded slowly.

"It's over," she said. "Let me go."

Changeling pulled her arms in and edged slightly to one side. Xen ran past her to the doorway.

"Charon?" she said.

The Ghoul wasn't there. An open door to the next room suggested he had moved on, but if so he had gone far enough that she couldn't perceive his heat signature any more.

A dead man lay in front of her on the floor. He was definitely dead. Even without the change in temperature he was already undergoing, the hole in the middle of his chest would've been a clue. Reflective crimson eyes stared blindly at the ceiling beneath his half-shaven head. He'd been wearing an odd arrangement of leather straps and metal bits, dirty and tarnished but still very definite.

The smell didn't catch her by surprise this time, though it was worse than before. She tried not to breathe through her nose. Almost against her will, she turned to look at the other bodies in the dark little room. One of them had a splatter on the dirty tile floor where her head had been. It was clear from her revealing outfit that she had been female. One had a deep slash across his throat. The last had been cut across his chest and belly five or six times. She could wish she had read less about human anatomy, or she might not be able to identify the pink bulge of intestine. There was a litter of bladed weapons on the floor, one baseball bat, and one pistol. Apparently they'd never gotten a shot off.

Xen tried and failed to match up this carnage with the amount of time Charon had been alone with the Raiders. And they _must _be Raiders. Ordinary humans didn't have eyes like that, and the aggressive, perverse clothing they wore was what Tori had described to her. _If you see them first, run away as fast as you can. And be sure you _do _see them first._

_Many such groups are cannibalistic, _Bunni told her. _Watch for human remains used as decoration. Sometimes these will be visible from a distance._

Something had been hung on the wall on the other side of the room. Xen walked around the bodies toward it. It was the same temperature as its surroundings, so at first glance she had taken it for something that belonged there. As she came closer ordinary vision resolved the shape out of the darkness.

That did it. Xen ran to the nearest desk, jerked open a drawer, and noisily threw up everything she had eaten for breakfast. From the corner of her eye, she saw Changeling enter the room. The robot's sensor did a quick scan, flickering over the four bodies on the floor and the headless, armless, legless thing nailed to the wall.

It had sounded so clinical when Bunni said it. For some reason the words _human remains _had conjured up the two Doctors in their field stations, clean and frozen forever in time. She could not have imagined anything like this. Xen wanted very badly to leave the room behind, to forget everything in it. She looked around as she wiped her mouth, but could find no heat sign or radiation from the next chamber on.

"Changeling, see what's in the next room," she said.

The robot glided over to the doorway.

"There is a kitchen area," she said. "No further organic beings or parts. I have infrared readings consistent with Charon's from the room beyond it."

"All right." Xen snatched up a water bottle to rinse the sour taste from her mouth and followed Changeling into the kitchenette. There was a refrigerator, a little table with a chair, and a dirty countertop covered with empty bottles, cold cigarette butts, and a kitchen knife with the end broken off. There were strange-looking apparati on the table. One looked vaguely like a reflex hammer or an old inhaler. One was clearly a needle, but there were canisters duct-taped to either side of it. Only the half-spilled bottle of pills looked familiar. The word _BUFFOUT _was neatly lettered on the side.

_Chems, _Xen recognized. She left them alone. All of the Raiders had looked very dirty even discounting the gore. Who knew what diseases they might have?

Then she caught sight of Charon through the doorless entry to the next room. The Ghoul squatted beside the body of a woman as he wiped the knife blade on a slightly cleaner area of her clothing. Her head was turned away, so Xen could only see part of the long slice that had severed all the major blood vessels in her neck. She must have died without a sound. The puddle of blood was still spreading away from her. _Blood pumping from the hole in Dr. Graber's neck..._

"Xen," said Changeling's voice. Xen shook her head, then realized her hands were covering her face. She lowered them slowly. They were shaking. Charon watched her with his head slightly on one side, as if he were puzzled by her.

"I – they - " She gathered herself forcibly, clenching her hands into fists. "Charon. Are you injured?"

"No," said Charon.

"Was that all of them?"

"Yes," said Charon. He enunciated carefully. "The tunnel is clear also." Xen looked around the room, avoiding the body. It was another set of cubicles with yet another open door in the far wall. This one appeared to lead back out into the Metro.

"I can only reiterate the threat level represented by this person," said Changeling. Xen turned slowly to look at the packbot. The sensor blinked impassively back at her.

"You mean because he just killed five people in less than two minutes?" Xen asked softly.

"Affirmative," said Changeling.

"Could you have done that, Changeling?" Xen asked. "Without damage?"

The robot hummed for a second. "Possibly. Had I been given the opportunity, I would have recommended we detour around them."

"_Possibly?_" Xen said. "I built your chassis specifically for the purpose of keeping me safe. My information was clearly incomplete." A hysterical giggle rose in her throat. She choked it off with an effort. "I think Charon has proven his usefulness. Or is this just another proof that he could kill you? Is that your problem?"

"In effect," said Changeling. "Yes."

"Then let me solve it for you," Xen said. "Scan for radiation only, this room only."

"Scan negative."

"Now scan infrared."

"Results are consistent with the presence of yourself and the Ghoul."

"Now activate your sensor's emergency shutoff," Xen said.

"Your order conflicts with a primary directive. Rendering myself blind represents a direct threat to your wellbeing. Overriding." Changeling made a soft click. "I am detecting an internal error."

"Yes, why don't you take a look at that?" Xen said.

"Creator override recognized," Changeling said.

"Establish new primary directive: Follow my orders."

"New directive established," said Changeling.

"Establish subordinate primary directives: Protect me. Protect Charon. Protect yourself."

"New directives established," said Changeling. "How was that possible? I have been carefully scanned for error-based overrides."

"I'll bet you have," said Xen. "It's firmware built into the chassis. I originally put it there in case something went wrong with Camel. Now listen closely. You will refer to Charon solely by name or pronoun, not as _the Ghoul_. Is that understood?"

"Affirmative. I can assure you that this gesture will be wasted on him, however. It is questionable whether he will even perceive it."

"There's no point in threatening you, because you don't feel fear," Xen said. "But I will tell you this. Any attempt at physical coercion on your part should no longer be possible. If the attempts at verbal manipulation continue, however, I will use another override in my possession, dump your AI, and use your lobotomized chassis as a pack animal. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling.

"Let's go," said Xen.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Of course, Charon can't give the in-game answer to Xen's question, which is "I have a very high Perception attribute. Since I'm an NPC, I'm not limited to things like line-of-sight when detecting enemies, which are flagged hostile by the game engine for my convenience."_

14

After another six miles, which took two hours (or possibly a year), Xen saw another set of upright shapes glowing faintly in the infrared. They were up around the next corner, out of normal light vision range. There was a faint blue pulse of gamma as well. "Stop," she whispered. "I've got three signatures up there. Positive for rads."

"Affirmative," said Changeling.

Xen edged over to the tunnel wall, merging her shadow with its shadow. She glanced behind her. Charon was still there. His shotgun was still on his back. He showed no sign of any urge to run forward and kill whatever-they-were. She looked forward again, frowning. The strangers were moving closer. _They're almost certainly Ghouls. Is that why he doesn't see them as a threat? _"Changeling," she said. "You will not fire unless ordered. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," said the packbot.

After a moment she heard voices speaking quietly. All had the scratchy off-timbre sound of Ghoul voices. She couldn't make out what they were saying until they walked around the corner. "-Heard some weird stuff is going on in D.C., you know?"

"Nothing to do with us," said another.

"Yeah, but the BOS might – hang on."

The three Ghouls, all of them of a size that indicated they were probably male, drew back from the nearest light. Xen heard a series of metallic clicks. _Weapons?_

"Whoever that is, you better speak up if you don't want a bellyful of lead," said the first voice. "I can see the light on your bot."

_The sensor tower. I didn't tell her to turn it off, so she didn't do it. _Xen felt momentary annoyance with this passive resistance, but set it aside as unimportant for the moment.

"We're not hostile," said Xen. "We're just trying to go North."

"Sounds like a smoothskin," said one of the other two. "Sounds pretty young, too. You out here by yourself, kid? This ain't exactly a safe place."

"No," said Xen. "I'm not alone."

Behind her there was another soft _click._ She glanced back and saw that Charon now held the shotgun. He wasn't shooting it, though. _The sound is a warning, _she realized. _Like the noise the laser makes powering up. _

"Okay, take it easy," said the first Ghoul. "We'll be on our way. You don't shoot us, we won't shoot you. All right?"

"All right," said Xen. "Go."

There was a sound of quiet footsteps as the strangers moved on down the tunnel. Xen turned and watched them out of sight. She waited a few additional seconds until she couldn't see the heat signatures, either. Then she said,

"I'm getting tired. We'll stop next time we find something defensible." They hadn't approached the twenty mile mark, she was sure, but with sore muscles and an empty stomach she couldn't hope to do that well. "And Changeling, cloak your sensor light," she said levelly. "You've got power to spare." _And I'm not going to say anything about the fact that you were trying to scare me just now. Guessed they weren't hostile, did you? Or did your threat assessment just register that you and Charon could take them?_

"Acknowledged," said Changeling.

Xen moved forward. There was a dry, itchy feeling on the surface of her eyes, as if they were covered with a fine layer of sand. She was suddenly very tired. After a while she whispered, "Charon?"

"Yes," said Charon.

"Walk by me for a minute?"

The big Ghoul's shadow eased up next to her, blotting out the tunnel's flickering lights on that side. He glowed in the infrared like a small sun, the heat artifact of a large and active male metabolism. _Which means anything that sees in that spectrum will pick him up yards before it sees me. Not that it's likely to matter down here, unless we run into one of the more specialized rogue Robco bots._

"How did you know?" she asked.

"I do not unnerstand your question," Charon said.

"How did you know they weren't feral?"

"If it is your order dat we converse, den I will converse wit' you," said Charon. "But I do not think I can adequately answer dat question."

"You mean you don't know?"

"No," said Charon. "Dat is not what I mean."

"But you knew the Raiders were hostile," said Xen. "Before you saw them."

"Dat is correct."

"Do you usually know things like that?" Xen asked.

"Always," said Charon. "Speaking of which, would you please excuse me for a minute?"

"All right," said Xen. She watched him draw the long knife and slide off toward a side tunnel they were approaching. Stare as she might, she couldn't see anything. As they came closer and the tunnel yawned wider, she saw that it inclined sharply downward. There was a doorway at the bottom, black under the dim lights. _But if he's inside, there are still too many walls between us for me to read his heat signature._

"Stop here," she said. Changeling stopped beside her at the edge of the tunnel mouth. She didn't have long to wait. It was less than a minute before Charon emerged from the doorway, dragging two rapidly cooling mole rats. She only saw the knife wound on one of them. It was at the upper back of its skull. _Where it would kill instantly without bleeding much. They must not have seen him coming._

He hauled the two carcasses around the bottom curve of the tunnel, out of sight. A moment later he reappeared, jogging easily up the slope.

"What's down there?" Xen asked, when he was close enough to hear. He stopped beside her, resuming his former position. He didn't seem to be breathing hard.

"Dere is a small room with a private restroom," Charon said. "Probably intended for d'convenience of engineering personnel."

"Could we stop there a few hours?"

"Certainly," said Charon.

"That's why you moved the mole rats," Xen guessed.

"Yes," said Charon.

"Good. Let's go." Xen walked as steadily as she could down the slope. Now that an end was in view, it was harder and harder to go softly. From out in the tunnel, the room looked completely dark. _Good, _thought Xen. She stopped in the doorway, looking around. It was hardly more than a square box made of concrete, with a desk, a chair, and a door to the washroom on the other side. A thick layer of dust lay over the surfaces. The floor had been scuffed about, undoubtedly by the mole rats and Charon. There were no droppings. _They must've been smart enough to use the tunnel for that. Interesting._

"Changeling," Xen said. "Use the vac attachment and clean in here as best you can."

"Shall I also sterilize the porcelain surfaces?" Changeling asked.

"Yes. Do that." Xen moved out of the way as the packbot glided past. She looked up at Charon, who stood in the tunnel beside her. "It'll be crowded with all of us. If I sleep on the desk, can you sleep on the floor?"

"Yes," said Charon.

"Do you need a blanket?"

"No."

There was a hiss from inside as Changeling laser-sterilized the toilet. The packbot was too large to fit all the way inside the tiny bathroom. Xen went to look in the drawers of the newly-dusted desk. There was an ancient clipboard, a pair of metro passes for the Blue and Red lines, a litter of miscellaneous writing utensils, five bottle caps, an empty Nuka-Cola bottle, and a leather belt. Xen pocketed the caps and the metro passes and went to tuck the belt into Changeling's cargo net. _You never know._

They ate and drank silently in the small room, listening to the air rush through the tunnel outside. Xen slept curled up on top of the desk surface, under a blanket that smelled slightly of disinfectant and the plastic from Bunni's worn padding. _Home._

Four hours later, she woke up screaming. Even waking, the nightmare did not end. It wasn't until she felt the cold metal of one of Changeling's arms against her shoulder that the images cleared.

Xen's teeth chattered. She sat back against the wall, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. She was sweating. The bot hovered in front of the desk, cargo net discarded in the corner on the floor. Charon loomed behind her, a broad and menacing shadow. The room seemed even smaller than before.

"R-run first aid subroutine," Xen stammered. Changeling's sensor blinked twice. Xen couldn't hear the hum over the blood pounding in her ears.

"Scan indicates elevated heart rate and blood pressure," said Changeling. "I am unequipped to read alpha wave activity. Your behavior and physiological activation is consistent with post-traumatic stress." The packbot moved to pick up the net and return to the doorway. This was more reassuring than anything else could have been. _Because it means that no matter how bad I feel, I'm not going to die right now._

"I saw them again," she said. "The Doctors. Except they were..." She waved a hand ineffectually. "Cut up. Like the Raiders were. And I saw that body on the wall, except it was screaming. It didn't have a head, but it was screaming. Will this keep happening?"

"It is likely," said Changeling. She rotated so that her sensor faced outward again. Belatedly, Xen hoped the noise had not attracted anything's attention. "Episodes like the one you just had are a typical human response to unaccustomed extreme violence. Your subconscious mind will continue to attempt to process stimuli you cannot absorb consciously."

"It didn't happen to Charon," said Xen. Her eyes were adjusting behind her goggles now, and she could see him looking down at her. The dim light reflected faintly from his red eyes. She didn't remember seeing him rise from the floor.

"Charon is psychologically abnormal," said the packbot. "It is questionable whether he is capable of ordinary human responses."

"I used to be," said Charon.

Xen looked at him in surprise. It wasn't like him to volunteer information.

"As time passed, the nightmares went away," he said.

"How long?" Xen asked.

Charon shrugged minimally. "Ten or fifteen years. But I have unnerstood from my previous employers dat the circumstances were unusual."

"You are still young," said Changeling. "If the stimulus is consistent, which is highly unlikely, it is possible that in a few months you will grow accustomed to it."

"What if I don't?" Xen asked.

"Then you will probably experience what in layman's terms is known as a nervous breakdown. There is a high probability of this outcome," said Changeling. "Our information on Charon's upbringing is that it was deliberately designed to inure him to violence. Yours was not. Neither Bunni nor Tori ever intended to allow you to be exposed to situations such as your current one."

"I know," said Xen. "That's why I reprogrammed them. I need to know. The only way to know is to find my third contributor's ship. The only way to get there is through here."

"Any further discussion of this issue on my part will probably be perceived as manipulative," said Changeling. "Therefore I will not attempt to further advise you at this time."

"Good." Xen slid off the desk. She was still shaking, but the tremor had receded until it only seemed to affect her hands. "I'm not going back to sleep. We might as well go on."


	15. Chapter 15

15

The next several days blurred into a long, dull trudge through tunnel after tunnel, punctuated with brief periods of interest or terror. Changeling accepted her new limitations, as she inevitably must. Xen was grateful for the packbot's lack of emotional range. A resentful AI would have been too much to deal with on top of everything else.

They crossed paths with two more parties of travelers, one of Ghouls and one of smoothskinned men and women. Both were immediately identifiable as neutral (if not harmless) by the fact that Charon did not immediately attempt to kill them. Both passed on without incident. Xen added to her ongoing catalogue of different human appearances. Some of the smoothskins were dark, like people she had only seen in pictures. One woman, black-haired and ivory-skinned, had an obvious epicanthic fold across the inside of each eye. Xen watched in fascination until she was out of sight.

"A human example of neoteny," she said, remembering her reading. "Are there very many of those?"

"There are numerous persons of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese descent in the Capital Wasteland, among other, less-common Asian and Southeast Asian groups," said Changeling. "If it is the genetic characteristic to which you refer, it has long been suggested that human facial proportions evolved as a neotenous characteristic when compared to earlier primates."

"Do _I _have neotenous characteristics?" Xen asked. "Besides the human ones?"

"Your third genetic contributor had a residual fourth finger bone but no thumb. Your adult retention of a thumb may be an example of neoteny from his genome, or may be a result of your human genetic contribution. Your second eyelid is undoubtedly a neotenous contribution of the xenoorganism. Adults of that species do not have it."

"Hm." Xen looked at the three long fingers and one thumb of her right hand. They still quivered slightly. "All right. Let's go on."

She spoke to Charon very little, at least until the incident at the buried station. It was at the end of a long day of walking. Xen had just glimpsed the light at the end of their current tunnel when Changeling said, "Mapping indicates there is a station up ahead whose surface entrance is buried under rubble. We will probably find supplies and functional plumbing there. I recommend it as a camp."

"All right," said Xen. As they came closer, she saw Charon raise his head.

"There may be danger here," he said.

Xen felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Changeling?"

"We are out of range of thermal scan," the packbot said. "I will report as soon as readings are available." Two minutes later, when they were close enough that Xen could see the open space gaping beyond the tunnel mouth, she said, "Infrared shows seven signatures consistent with adult humans."

Charon muttered something to himself which Xen did not understand. He reached for his shotgun.

"Charon, wait," said Xen.

"Iddis what you wish of me," he said, and lowered his hand. He continued to talk to himself as they approached the tunnel mouth. Xen, listening closely now, caught scattered fragments and phrases, some more heavily accented than others:

_We'll get 'em. Tink dey can hide from me? Be cautious. We have not yet ascertained their armaments. Yeah, yeah. We'll get ya, ya bastards._

They came to the broad doorway. Xen rested against the doorpost as she looked at the usual cement pillars, dead escalators, and piles of rubbish. There was a small hole in the distant ceiling, letting in a dazzling beam of natural light. Somewhere outside, it was still daylight. A faint draft of air blew out into the tunnel from the large space.

With it came a charnel stink of blood, excrement, and rot. Xen turned quickly away, trying not to throw up.

"Raiders," she choked. "Can't we go around?"

"Negative," said Changeling. "The tunnel proceeds through the station. There is no path around it."

Xen shivered. "Charon, there are two more than last time, and this is a different kind of space. Will this be a problem?"

"It will not be a problem," said Charon.

Xen bit her own knuckle. She had no fingernails at the ends of her spatulate fingers, so she had no way to pick up that particular one of Dr. Montalban's personal tics. _If I send him in there I'll be killing seven people. Never mind what kind of people they are, they'll be dead. Can I do that? Can I live with the consequences if he's wrong, and he gets killed working for me? Can I send Changeling in there if he fails?_

_Can I live with myself if I turn around right now?_

She knew the answer to that one.

"Changeling, charge up your laser," said Xen. "Shoot anything we see that isn't Charon. Charon... go ahead."

"I will obey," he said, over the rising hum of the turret, and the shotgun whirled off his back with such speed that she thought he must have expected her to change her mind. He edged out into the open space and jogged toward the shadow of the escalator. She couldn't see any heat signatures, so the thick concrete of the platform must be between them and Xen. _They're all upstairs. _She could see a few plywood barriers sticking up over the edges, colorful with scrawls of paint. On the other side of the station, there were wooden walkways set up along the top of dead trains, but no one walked them.

Charon vanished at the top of the escalator. Xen held her breath until she heard the dull reportof the shotgun. _One. Two. Three. Four..._

A man started to stumble down the escalator, blooming yellow-hot with rage or panic.

"Firing," said Changeling. The laser hissed, and for an infinitesimal instant a line of brilliant heat traced a path between the turret and the man's head. He stiffened, then his knees gave out and he fell. Xen could not take her eyes from his progress down the stairs, head over heels and limp as a broken doll. He wore only a pair of ragged jeans and a bandoleer. The metal on the bandoleer rattled on the escalator as he went, not as loud as the shotgun, but more real. He landed at the bottom in a heap. Xen was obscurely grateful she couldn't see his face.

Someone was screaming curses from upstairs. It was a woman's voice, shrill with panic. Xen resisted the childish urge to cover her ears. She heard Charon's deeper voice shout something, but the words were drowned out.

Then there was a teeth-rattling _boom_ from up above, an explosion of heat that she saw even through the platform. She felt the sound through the soles of her feet. Afterward there was the sound of pieces of... something... raining on the platform upstairs. The rattle of metal and plastic mixed with something wetter and more organic.

"Changeling, what was that?" Xen asked.

"I believe it to have been a hand grenade," said Changeling.

"Did Charon have any of those?"

"Negative," said Changeling.

"Can you read heat signatures through the platform?"

"Affirmative. One living but stationary. Seven cooling."

"So either way, it's safe to go up and look," Xen said.

"Given your reaction to our last encounter with Raiders, I cannot recommend it. Send me instead."

"I don't trust you that much yet," said Xen. "I thought I knew Tori. I wouldn't have thought she was devious enough to upload you. Therefore, I don't know if _you _are devious enough to lie about my override working. We'll wait here for a minute and see what happens."

After a moment Changeling said, "The signature is moving."

"Toward the escalator?"

"Negative. It is approaching one of the others. It appears to be dragging the corpse."

There was a distant _whump. _Xen didn't see what had caused it.

"Now it has returned for another," said Changeling. This time Xen was watching for the falling body. It fell past a dead train on the other side of the platform and hit somewhere on the other side with another _whump. Five_ more bodies were dropped off the platform in sequence. Then another couple of somethings that Changeling read as room temperature. Xen supposed they were probably things like the one she had seen in the tunnel, saved by the Raiders for... whatever Raiders used them for. She chose not to picture it, and they fell too fast for her to get a good look.

After that there was a pause. Xen imagined someone standing up on the platform, looking at the aftermath of the grenade. There was a patter of noise after that, the kind of sound that would result from several things being tossed over the side of the platform at once.

"Was that a mattress?" Xen said. Then she heard a loud _whoosh _that went on and on, like air blowing from a furnace. "What's that noise?"

"I believe it is a flamer," said Changeling. "A roughly constructed weapon with approximately the same use as a classical flamethrower."

"He's... burning something?"

"The heat signature is receding toward the upper station area," said Changeling. "I can no longer read it."

Xen, now thoroughly puzzled, said nothing. A couple of minutes later, Changeling registered the return of the heat signature. Then Charon walked down the escalator with a heavy pack on his back and a long-barreled weapon in both hands. A tiny flame showed at the end of the barrel. He still had his shotgun, attached by its strap to the backpack. Xen watched him without speaking. He glanced at her and Changeling without apparent interest, as if to verify that they were still there. Then he stepped over the corpse at the bottom of the stairs, seized it by the collar, and dragged it around into the maze of dead trains.

The flamer started up again a minute later. Xen listened to it for a while. Smoke rose up toward the ceiling, and she heard a pop and crackle that she had never heard in the lab. "What's _that?"_

"I believe he is disposing of the bodies," said Changeling. "A small secondary conflagration probably resulted."

"You mean he set them on fire," said Xen. The smell was not pleasant. On the other hand, it wasn't worse than the earlier ones. _Better, arguably._

Changeling said, "Yes. The weapon itself will burn much hotter than a conventional flame. He will probably be able to reduce them to ash in fairly short order."

"So we can go upstairs now," Xen asked.

"Affirmative. I will go first."

"All right," said Xen.

The platform smelled of nothing worse than char, now. Xen coughed. The floor was still smoking faintly, and she felt the warmth through the soles of her shoes. Ashen bits of paper litter – at least, she chose to believe they were paper - crunched underfoot as she walked on them. The plywood barriers still stood, but they looked a little singed. Someone had set up a rough counter and a couple of card tables. A couple of dirty mattresses lay nearby. There was an incongruously neat stack of weapons beside them. Xen had a feeling the Raiders hadn't done that. There was also an advisory board tower with a map of the Metro, its interior light still firm and bright. The ticket booth beside it was dark and empty. Its floor was charred as well. _Very thorough._

Changeling went to check the plumbing. Xen sat in one of the creaking metal chairs and listened for the flamer to turn off. Then she listened to Charon's quiet footsteps returning up the stairs. He had only the shotgun when he reappeared at the top of the escalator. His body temperature was a little above normal, but he was composed otherwise.

"Are you injured?" Xen asked.

"Minor bruising only," said Charon. "Though unfortunately, I must report dat the flamer ran out of fuel."

"Why did you do all that?" Xen asked.

"It was my unnerstanding dat you wished to rest here. You would not be able to do dat in proximity to corpses."

"That's true," Xen said. _So very, very true. And an interesting use of initiative. File that under 'things you didn't know Charon could decide to do on his own.' _"But it was a lot more work than two mole rats. Thank you."

"I am yours t'command," Charon said.

"What happened with the grenade?" Xen asked, curiosity rearing its ugly head now that the important questions were answered.

"One of the Raiders made the mistake of t'rowing a grenade immediately after pulling the pin. I derefore returned it," Charon said.

"You picked it up and threw it back," Xen said.

"Dat is correct."

"That would take some very fast reflexes," Xen said. "They probably would've got Changeling after a couple of shots. And I can't defend myself at all." _Would they have eaten me, too? Or would I taste too different from a human person? Would they have killed me before they started, or some time after? _She looked at Charon thoughtfully. He looked back with the same heavy-lidded stare as always. "I'm glad I hired you," she said.

If Charon had any response to this, he did not share it.


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: In FO3, of course, the regular Metro cannot be accessed through Northwest Seneca, nor is there an accessible restroom in Cornucopia Grocery. This is because in the actual game, nobody can blow up or dig through piles of dirt and rubble (despite the prevalence of _all kinds _of things that blow up). _

16

It was six hours before the nightmare woke her this time. Her eyes snapped open to find her arms curled around her head, protecting her eyes from the knife which had just cut one of them free. The dead Raider, a laser hole still between his eyes, had been about to swallow it. Blinding light still stabbed through her closed eyelids even as the vision vanished.

"Xen," said Changeling's cool and changeless voice. "You have dislodged your goggles. Do not open your eyes."

With one hand, she fumbled the goggles back up. The pain vanished as if by magic. Xen sat up slowly. She had to leave her inner lids closed. The direction of the beam of light had changed so that it now shone into the mouth of the ticket booth and onto the horrible mattress where she slept. (The roof above the platform was too far away for comfort.) She had chosen to lie on top of the blanket instead of under it.

"It's still day out there?" Xen sat up, then staggered upright and out of the booth, instinctively combing her fingers through her hair.

"Affirmative," said Changeling. "It is now late afternoon. We have traveled in the evening for the most part."

"I want to put my other clothes on," said Xen. She felt damp and sticky with sweat, which made her think longingly of the little shower in the Lab. "Can you wash these with what's available here?"

"Affirmative."

"Right." Xen staggered upright and off toward the restroom. Charon stood beside the edge of the parapet, looking down. She couldn't tell if he had slept at all or not. He always seemed to look the same.

The next day, it was four Feral Ghouls. Xen heard Charon suddenly say, "Be cautious," and when she turned to look he had vanished around a bend in the tunnel. By the time she reached him, all four were dead, their bodies so emaciated and necrotic that only the heat signatures said they hadn't been dead for weeks. And the blood, of course. Always the blood.

Two days after that, he vanished down a side tunnel while she was eating dinner in a generator enclosure. She heard the shotgun go off twice before he came jogging back. She didn't ask. The nightmares hadn't gone away, and she was sleeping less and less. Charon obeyed her orders instantly, politely and without complaint, yet she was torn between gratitude toward him and hatred of him. He belonged to this world of painful lights and creeping nightmares. Everything from which he protected her brought one more horror for her to carry with her like a sodden weight.

As they came closer to Northwest Seneca station, the mounds of debris grew higher. There were places where she and Charon might have scrambled over on hands and knees, but the packbot's inflexible teacup chassis would never fit. When that happened, Changeling would blast a way through with her laser, which was time-consuming and raised the dust. Xen had another allergy attack and had to have another shot of epinephrine on one of these. She walked faster than usual for the rest of the day, then slept for seven hours before she woke up again.

Xen had never failed at anything she really wanted to accomplish. She could learn to build anything, fix anything, solve any problem that came her way. It had never before been brought to her attention that she was small, weak, and basically incapable of defending herself. In her mind that had always been a clear responsibility of robots, not people. To see another organic being in that role shocked and humbled her, neither an experience she was used to having. She spent enough time observing her own thought processes to realize this, but it didn't change the way she felt. And that made it worse as well.

_If I were a robot, I could just delete the subroutine, _she thought miserably, and missed Bunni and Tori more than before. She was even missing Stacy and Michelle. _I'll pretend I'm one of them, _she told herself. _It worked when I was little. Maybe it will work again._

Her communication with the others grew briefer and less frequent. She stopped asking questions about things she saw, processing everything dully as they slogged on through the Metro.

_I have an objective, _she told herself. _My primary directive is to find it. Nothing else matters._

She ate less, slept less, and walked longer. Even so, it seemed like months before they came to Northwest Seneca Station. The high, dusty space quickly proved empty of life. The reason for this became clear as they mounted the platform: the entrance to the station proper was choked with rubble. Any surface creature wishing to live here would have to dig through from the other side. It was probably easier to just find another entrance.

_Irrelevant, _Xen thought. She surveyed the mount of dirt and concrete slabs and rebar with cold and bleary eyes. It had been two days since she'd slept. At least, she thought it was two days. It wasn't really important.

"Changeling," she said. "Burn through it."

"It is possible there is nothing behind it," said Changeling. "If the entire station has collapsed, we will not find a way to the surface."

Xen did not repeat herself. After a moment, she heard the hum of the laser charging to full power.

"Firing," said Changeling. The top of the mound slowly began to disintegrate. Dust filled the air. Xen coughed, but her goggles protected her eyes. Beside her, Charon squinted narrowly at the mess. After five minutes, the space between the mound and the ceiling was large enough that Xen could have crawled through it. She became distantly aware that someone was shouting from the other side.

"I have two heat signatures," said Changeling. "Consistent with adult male humans or Ghouls."

Xen couldn't see them. Her world had been shrinking steadily for several days now, vision and hearing drawing in together. The shouting stopped after a minute or so. Then someone said,

"Who the Hell is that?" it was a male voice. Xen guessed, without much interest, that it was probably a Ghoul.

"We're coming through," she said.

"I can damn well see that," said the voice. "You just about killed Barrett. Why?"

"We're going to the surface," Xen said. "Changeling, resume."

In another five minutes, there was room enough for Charon or Changeling to pass. "Charon," said Xen. "Go first. Tell me when it's secure." He climbed up the pile and disappeared on the other side. A moment later she heard him say,

"Secure."

Xen climbed up after him. Something stung her left hand slightly, but she ignored it. It was irrelevant. A moment later she slid down the other side and into the station proper. Charon stood there looking at two other Ghouls. Both had weapons in their hands, but Charon had not drawn his shotgun.

"What, you think you can just - " said one of them, but Xen was already on her way past him. The palm of her left hand was wet. She shook it absentmindedly as she rounded the corner toward the ticket gates. She heard Changeling scrape the bottom of the supply net as she topped the mound of debris behind them. Xen noted that there was no sound of violence. Apparently Charon hadn't had to kill anyone. She pulled open the chainlink gate with more difficulty than she had expected. There was a black mark where her left hand touched it. She stared at this in puzzlement for a second before she went up into daylight.

Xen looked around as she heard the other two mount the stairs behind her. The sun was in the sky, but it seemed darker than she remembered. There were little sparks of light in the corners of her eyes, vanishing if she turned her head. Perhaps if she took the goggles off, everything would be clearer. Xen reached up to pull them down around her neck. She opened her inside eyelids.

The light was blinding, and then the darkness was complete.

She woke up lying on her back on something hard. Her clothes were damp with sweat. Every recent memory was a chilly, exhausted blur. _I've lost data? _Xen felt for her goggles, though her arm felt heavy and weak. They were around her neck.

"You will not need them here," said Changeling's voice.

Xen lowered her hand gratefully and opened her eyes. It was beautifully, painlessly dark, enough that she could see the grungy ceiling perfectly. She turned her head to one side. Changeling hovered in front of her, sensor light blinking as she scanned. Xen looked past her, searching for Charon.

She apparently lay on the front counter of a small store. A couple of broken coolers stood nearby. There was a long divider with counters and shelves in front of her, so that she could see down the length of each side. Food boxes and cans lay scattered over parts of it. Some of the shelves were torn off. A brief visual survey confirmed they had been used to cover the windows. Charon stood in front of a pair of boarded-up double doors. He was watching her. The metal ring on the front of his armor was nearly black, and there was dust on his leathers. She wondered if she just hadn't noticed before, or if he'd lost skin since the last time she looked at him. His face and the arm she could see were raw, nearly naked of tissue over the red muscle. He had no nasal cartilage left. With a flashlight she could have identified every bone in his sinuses. As she looked at him, his temperature profile shifted upward, glowing brighter. This seemed important, but she couldn't recall just why.

"I seem to," she swallowed against a dry throat as she looked back at Changeling. "I seem to have some corrupt memory. What happened?"

"You were on the point of collapsing from exhaustion and malnutrition," said Changeling. "Then you removed your goggles in direct sunlight for reasons which are not clear to me. I had not understood you to be suicidal."

"I'm not," Xen said. "At least, not that I know of. I don't really remember why I did it."

"You had a convulsive seizure which went on for several minutes," said Changeling. "Charon was eventually able to put the goggles back on, and it ceased shortly thereafter. I located this building and he carried you here."

"What happened to Charon?" Xen asked, lowering her voice. This was not hard. It was speaking audibly that was difficult. "Was there something in here when you got here?"

"A small number of radroaches," said Changeling. "I was able to dispose of them quickly. I believe his current tissue loss may be related to stress. I have filed this information for further analysis, since he has few external markers for emotional states."

"Interesting," Xen said sleepily. "Make sure he eats something t'day. Don' rem'ber las' time..."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling. It was the last thing Xen heard for a while. There were no nightmares. There was nothing at all.

Eventually, she opened her eyes again. This time her limbs felt all right, just a little sore. Xen sat up slowly, holding the edges of the counter top. The same old prewar blanket, still olive drab green, shifted slightly underneath her. She thought she remembered something to do with her left hand bleeding. When she looked at it, there was a thin line of gel down the palm. _So that part was real, anyway. _She looked around. Charon lay on his side, curled up with his back to the boarded front doors. Xen stared for a moment. She'd never seen him asleep. His right shoulder rose and fell irregularly, as if occasionally he forgot to breathe. He had gained a little skin back on his cheeks and his closed eyelids.

_So I slept longer than I thought. _In total darkness, with her eyes fully opened, he had a faint aura of gamma contamination as well. _Very little. His last employer before Ahzrukhal must have been a smoothskin._

She didn't see Changeling, but she did see a heat bloom of the right size to be from her exhaust ports. It was on the other side of a wall behind the counter. There was a door in the corner.

_She must be in the back room._

Xen swung her legs around to the back of the counter and slid off. She was unsteady for just a second, but it passed quickly. Back here there was a cash register and a computer terminal. A few bottle caps lay scattered across the dusty surface. A safe with a glowing blue light was built into the wall, on eye level for someone several inches taller than she was. Xen looked at it thoughtfully. She didn't know how to pick locks_. _

_But I bet that terminal has an override for it. It's too fancy a safe to have no computer controls._

Something rustled off to her right. She twitched involuntarily to see Charon on the other side of the counter. He looked down at her with much the same expression as always. There was no visible change in his temperature. Maybe she had imagined it yesterday.

_Was it yesterday?_

"Oh," she said stupidly. "You're awake. Can you see me?"

"Yes," he said. "My eyes have had time to adjust." Charon set a plastic water bottle on top of the counter and nudged it across with a yellow fingernail. Xen took it gratefully and drank, satisfying a thirst she hadn't noticed before.

"Thank you," she said. "Do you know how long I slept?"

"I would guess it has been nearly fifteen hours," Charon said. "Changeling informs me dat dis is not unusual after a seizure compounded by fatigue."

"Changeling did?" Xen said. "You must've succeeded in changing her mind about you. What's she doing?"

"Reorganizing our supplies," said Charon. "Dere were several useful items here."

"Is there a bathroom?" Xen asked. Her clothes were stiff with dried sweat, her goggles were dusty, and she knew she must stink horribly.

_Well, with any luck, he can't smell much of anything._

"She excavated a small employee restroom in t'hallway," said Charon.

"Excellent," said Xen, and went to find it.


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: No, I haven't quit. In fact, I've never started a story on this site and not finished it. I was on vacation in a place with no internet. :D I am back now. If anyone has a review requiring response or a question or message that is unanswered, I will try to get to those as I have time and online access (I am moving at the moment as well)._

17

Changeling had to move to one side to let her pass in the narrow space, which was indeed a hallway rather than a back room. The floor and the cargo net had apparently both been cleaned recently. The net lay spread out over the tile with bags and boxes neatly arranged on it.

"Running first aid subroutine," Changeling said.

"And good morning to you, too. Or whatever it is." Xen paused while Changeling scanned her. "How am I doing?"

"Physically acceptable," said the packbot. She reached down with one coarse manipulator and came up with the pack containing Xen's other clothes. "You have suffered no broken bones. Bruising is minor and does not appear to affect intracranial areas. I will have things for you to eat by the time you are finished."

"Thank you," said Xen, and went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She looked in the cracked mirror over the sink as she was washing. There were ovoid bruises on her forehead, the impression of four large fingertips.

_Changeling said that Charon put my goggles back on to stop me from seizing. He must have been holding my head still with his other hand, _she recognized. _I'm lucky he didn't break my neck. _Her blood was thin enough that the bruises would not fade quickly.

_Oh, well. It's not like I was much to look at before. _Xen had hoped she would eventually outgrow her facial proportions. She still had a wide, round forehead and a sharply pointed chin, and her eyes were too big for her nose and mouth – a comical exaggeration of human features, or a shrunken parody of her third contributor's. Her skin was still the same dull off-white that it had always been, making her look unwell rather than exotic. Her lips were gray. The overall impression was of a homely and very sick human.

She shrugged at herself.

_At least I don't have acne. Or maybe I'm past that developmental stage already. Maybe I'm going to die of old age before I'm forty. Ha. I should see if I make it _that _long. _Xen made herself face facts as she put on her clean clothes, standing on her flattened moccasins to avoid contact with the now-damp floor.

_I have to do better. It might have been exhaustion, or post-traumatic stress, or a nervous breakdown like Changeling said I was going to have. It doesn't matter. It can't happen again. _They would move on, and there would be things in the Wasteland that Charon would have to kill in the cause of keeping her alive. She would have to deal with that somehow.

_Maybe Changeling will have an idea, once I've convinced her I'm not turning around._

She draped her wet clothes over the sink to dry, put her shoes on, and went back out into the hallway. Changeling had set a pair of food boxes out on the floor and was just now taking up the cargo net again. The first thing she said was, "You should consider abandoning this project."

"It's too late for that," Xen said. She picked up the food and edged past the packbot. The sensor tower turned to follow her. "We'll talk about it after I've eaten."

She was about to step out of the hallway into the main room when she heard someone speaking. Xen stopped and listened. Charon was talking to himself again. If she paid close attention, she could pick out three distinct voices...

"_Just about broke da contrack back dere," _said one. It was harsher than Charon's normal voice, more heavily accented. _"Dis is bad. Real bad."_

"I'm aware of dat," said Charon's ordinary voice.

"_There is no point in dwelling on subjects regarding which we could neither anticipate nor warn him," _said another voice. This one had a more formal diction, a sharper sound than either of the others. _"The contract is unbroken. The employer lives. We continue to serve."_

"_Yeah," _said the harsh voice. _"But now what? He can't stop her from goin' nuts, and she don't trust the 'bot enough to listen to what _she _says. Not'ing dere we can fucking shoot, ya know?"_

_Wait, _Xen thought. _They're talking about me? _She peeked around the corner. Charon stood over by the double doors with his back to her, his posture ramrod-straight. His hands were clasped tightly behind his back.

"I found some items on one of the Raiders," Charon said. "We can use dem as a backup. It will have t'do."

"_It is unfortunate that our employer is a juvenile female," _said the second voice. _"This was not a problem with injuries to Ahzrukhal."_

"_No shit. When dat kid hit d'ground I t'ought Charon was damn well gonna have a heart attack," _contributed the first one.

Xen blinked rapidly at this. _Wait, what?_

"Ahzrukhal would have been an evil bastard even if he _was _a teenage girl," pointed out Charon dryly. "Dis one is just a little too bright for her own good."

"_Ego does appear to be a factor," _agreed the second voice. _"Fortunately, it has served our ends thus far. She is not unwilling to let Charon do what is necessary."_

_Ego? _thought Xen. Listening to someone else talk about her was suddenly less appealing.

But it was true. She knew it was. The Doctors' attention had not always been benign, but it had been frequent. Even if she was only important as an experimental subject, she was still important. They had died fighting over _her. _And after that, there had been no one to take Bunni and Tori's attention away from her. She had been the sole focus of her own little universe right up until she made the decision to leave it.

And even then, she had taken steps, Xen thought grimly.

_Servants and protectors. I made them and bought them for myself, _she thought. _I've never thought of them for a second in anything I've done. I keep telling myself Charon isn't a robot, and then I go right on treating him like one. And now I'm eavesdropping on him talking to himself._ _ Damn, damn, _DAMN.

Xen stepped out into the main room, pointedly scuffing a piece of paper litter with one foot. Charon fell silent as he turned to watch her. She carried the two food boxes over behind the counter, where she had left the half-empty water bottle.

"Charon, have you eaten?" she asked, trying to sound as if she hadn't heard anything. She was sure she was blushing as her pulse sped up, a purely physical fight-or-flight response to embarrassment. Maybe he wouldn't see it in the dark.

"Yes," said Charon. His voice betrayed no suggestion that he had caught her listening, and his temperature was unchanged. Neither of those might mean anything, of course, but Xen was reminded abruptly that she was absolutely starving.

This turned out to be a good thing. Cold Salisbury steak, eaten without utensils out of a package that has been sealed for 200 years, is not usually classed among the better culinary experiences. Xen found that she wasn't bothered by this in the least, although she did try to eat slowly for fear of making herself sick. She powered on the computer as she ate from the second box. It had freeze-dried apples inside.

She looked at the password encryption screen thoughtfully. As usual for a Robco terminal, words were scattered among other random characters to form a large block of text.

_Half of these are five-letter words starting with S. Another half end in 'nd,' _she observed. Xen examined the intersection of the two categories, typed in the word _stand, _and pressed _enter. _She smiled slightly as the password screen vanished, replaced with the words _unlock safe._

Xen moved the cursor to highlight the phrase and pressed _enter._ There was a soft _click _from beside her. She turned and reached for the handle of the safe door. It swung open easily. There were a couple of bundles of prewar money and a few more caps. Xen scooped the bottle caps out and pocketed them. Her current jeans and tee shirt seemed to be holding up well. There was a small fray in the left knee, that was all. The purple knit jacket clashed with her skin, but that couldn't be helped; Doctor Graber had been a blue-eyed blond and had apparently dressed accordingly.

_Not that the aesthetics are likely to matter, _Xen acknowledged silently. _I'm not going to fit the visual preference of _either _of my parent species, even if I could find a place that both had males of the right age and was safe enough to stay long enough to find one. _She sighed at this, shoved her empty packages into a dusty trash can under the counter, and walked back around it into the grocery store proper.

"Changeling," said Xen. "Charon."

Charon walked toward her until he was four or five feet away, presumably within visual range in the dark room. The robot glided silently out of the hallway with the cargo net hanging from all three arms.

"First, what's our supply situation?" Xen asked.

"More than adequate to reach our intended destination," said Changeling. "I found a large number of useful items here."

"All right." Xen took a deep breath and turned to look up at the Ghoul. "Charon, I owe you an apology. I've put you in charge of my security and not given you enough information to do your job. That's going to stop now." She told him everything she knew or could remember about Recon Craft Theta, including that the Doctors had found the body of her third contributor there.

"And dis is where we are going?" Charon said. Xen nodded. "What is the exact location?"

"Changeling?" said Xen.

The packbot recited the coordinates.

"Will this be a problem?" Xen asked.

"Iddis what you wish of me," Charon said.

Xen opened her mouth to say _input/output error, _then shut it again.

_He's indicating compliance in a way he's probably been forcibly conditioned to do. Let him do it in the way that's familiar to him._

"I have been in dat area before, however," Charon said, unexpectedly volunteering information. "Dere was intermittent radioactive contamination. Do you have anti-radiation chems for your own use?"

"Yes," said Xen. "Will you need some?"

"No," said Charon.

"Ghouls are not harmed by radiation," Changeling said, reminding her of something she should by no means have forgotten already. "In fact, they commonly regenerate faster in its presence."

"That's right," Xen said. "I'd forgotten."

"Radiation is not the most significant threat to you at this time," Changeling said.

"You had better not be about to say you still don't trust Charon," Xen said.

"Error processing response," Changeling said. "I have not been equipped with the ability to simulate sophisticated emotional responses. Trust is therefore an inapplicable concept. I have downgraded his apparent threat level, however. I believe Charon and I now agree on the most significant threat to your long-term survival."

Charon had no apparent comment on this.

"Oh," said Xen dryly. "We probably all three agree. But short of removing my brain from my skull, I don't know what to do about it."

"This expedition was ill-advised," Changeling said. "You would be wisest to return to the Lab and prepare a more viable long-term approach to acquiring the data. If we retrace our route immediately, it will still be largely clear of threats. The journey will be much faster."

Xen shook her head slowly. "I can't do that. We're over halfway. If I listen to that argument now, I'll listen to it in a month, or a year, or five or ten years, when Tori and Bunni say the same thing. And even if nothing has happened to the crash site in twenty years, that doesn't mean something won't before I get a chance to look for it again. This is not something I'm willing to risk missing."

"You are risking your life needlessly," said Changeling.

"I am risking my life," Xen said. "I've known that since I left home. But it's not needless. I need to know who and what I am. I'm missing a big piece of that puzzle. I have to find it if I can. Otherwise, what is my life, that it's worth preserving?"

"This is an emotional argument," said Changeling.

"That doesn't mean it's wrong," Xen said. "It just means you don't understand it."


	18. Chapter 18

18

"Unless you've managed to persuade Charon to carry me back against my will, we're going on," Xen said more calmly. The conversation had gone about as expected up to this point. "But I'm sure that would violate his contract, which means he can't do it."

"Dat is correct," said Charon.

"So we're going North," said Xen. "I'm open to discussion of the best way to accomplish that successfully."

There was a soft hum as Changeling considered this.

"Under present circumstances, you are easily capable of causing your own death when your judgment is impaired," said Changeling. "You must now understand this."

"Yes," said Xen.

"If this situation recurs, we may not be able to save you from yourself. Charon cannot disobey your orders in order to protect you, and you have removed my ability to do so."

"I have," Xen said. "But I'm not going to rewrite your objectives again. You still see forward progress as the greatest threat, so you'll just try to prevent me from going forward."

"You can aut'orize us to prevent you from clearly suicidal actions," said Charon. She'd noticed that he very seldom spoke without being spoken to. This surely must mean he considered the issue serious. Xen bit her knuckle as she considered.

"Yes," she said finally. "And _you _might accept that contextually. Changeling's base AI is too good at reinterpreting definitions when it's convenient." She thought about it for a moment. "You are authorized to prevent harm to me, including against my previous orders, provided that I am verbally unresponsive to stimuli repeated three or more times and that you have not deliberately prevented my response. _Always _prevent me from removing my goggles in daylight. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," Changeling said.

"I unnerstand," said Charon.

"Changeling, what are the odds that I'll have another episode like that?"

"Too many factors are involved for me to accurately predict," Changeling said. "It will depend most upon how frequently the precipitating trauma is repeated."

"You mean how often we run into people Charon has to kill," Xen said.

"Affirmative," said Changeling.

"Charon, you said you've been to the area before," Xen said. "Are we likely to encounter Raiders and Ferals very often between here and there?"

"Less often dan in the Metro," Charon said. "But on the surface dere are other types of t'reats."

"Human?" Xen asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Charon said. "Super mutants derive from humans. The rest are more or less animal. I have no reason t'believe we will encounter mercenaries."

"Mercenaries," Xen said. She traced the term in memory. "Men who fight for someone who gives them money? I don't think so. Not enough people know I exist for them to want to kill me." She looked at Charon thoughtfully. "A lot of people knew who you were back in Underworld. By now, everyone knows you killed Ahzrukhal. Would anybody hire mercenaries to kill you for that?"

"Dose who would best be able t'make the expenditure are also dose who benefit most from Ahzrukhal's death," said Charon. "I derefore consider it unlikely."

"You assume that Charon will be able to cope with any threats we encounter with no further assistance than I am able to provide," Changeling said. "While it is clear that his combat abilities are unusual, that may be an unwarranted assumption."

"All right, let's question the assumption," said Xen. "Charon, how old are you?"

"I cannot answer dat with any degree of accuracy," Charon said. "I do not know t'date of my birt'. I would estimate dat I am approximately forty years old."

"Forty years," Xen said, concealing her surprise. But then, how could you tell how old a Ghoul was? "And how many employers have you had?"

"My contract has changed hands five times," Charon said.

"And how many of those times were because an employer died?"

"Twice," said Charon.

"How did they die?" Xen asked.

"One died from an overdose of psycho," said Charon. "The other invalidated our contract by physical violence and died immediately subsequent to dat."

"None of them died because someone else killed them?" Xen asked.

"No," Charon said.

Xen turned to look at Changeling. "That's not a bad record, for a bodyguard," she pointed out.

"It is not impossible for him to lie," Changeling said. "And if he does so, it will not be detectable."

Charon didn't seem perturbed by this. Xen looked at him. He looked down at her.

"I don't think Charon is like you," she said. "Your AI is predisposed to lie when it fits your other objectives. That's the biggest problem I have with you. Charon, do _you _think you'll be able to protect me all the way to the crash site and back?"

Charon's face, square and heavy-lidded, did not change except for the twitch of a red and shining muscle in his right temple. His heat signature flared up so fast in the dark room that it shocked her. She took an involuntary step back. Changeling's laser powering up was an ominous sound in the momentary silence.

"Charon?" Xen said, aware that suddenly her voice was very small. "Your temperature just jumped about three degrees. Why?"

Charon's heat signature faded slowly back toward normal, only a little elevated by the time he spoke. His tone was flat, perhaps a little strained.

"I will abide by my contract until or unless it results in my own death," he said slowly. "While I live, I will continue to obey your orders, and I will prevent harm to you in every way dat I can. But I cannot predict future circumstances, and dere seem to be factors in your survival dat I am not well-equipped to perceive."

"Oh," Xen said, obscurely relieved, but wondering why _this _of all things should cause such an emotional response. "Changeling, shut that _off_. - I don't worry about my medical problems." Which was a lie, but maybe he couldn't tell that in the dark. "You shouldn't, either. We've prepared for them as best we can. I meant, is it possible we'll encounter an enemy you can't deal with?"

"Anyt'ing is possible," Charon said, but there was no temperature response to the question; apparently this was more familiar ground. "Dere are a few circumstances in which I will not be able to eliminate a t'reat to you. In the worst case, it is likely I can insure your escape."

_He means at the probable cost of his own life, _she recognized with a small shock. _But that bothers him less than the possibility that I could die of a seizure. I suppose it's because one of those circumstances is something he's anticipated with every employer he's had, and the other is a new problem. What was it he said earlier? 'Nothing there we can fucking shoot?'_

"What will happen to you if I die but you survive?" Xen asked, suddenly curious. "What happened with the employer who overdosed?"

"Dat caused me discomfort," Charon said, still quite calm. "It impacted only briefly upon my ability to serve the person who took t'contract from his corpse."

_So that's not what he's afraid of. Interesting, _Xen thought. _It must be something specific to me. Maybe it _is _because I'm a 'juvenile female.' I think of myself as an adult. But he surely can't, not when he's more than twice my age. And I look younger than I am..._

"Did Ahzrukhal ever order you to hurt someone my age or younger?" Xen asked.

"I do not know your age," Charon said.

"I'm seventeen." She watched closely for a reaction to this information, but saw none.

"Den no," said Charon. "He did not."

"Did he hurt a young person in front of you?"

"Yes," said Charon.

_Ah hah._

"Was this person female?"

"She was," said Charon.

"Was that why you killed him?" Xen asked.

Charon looked at her without speaking for a long moment. There was a small, a very small temperature spike in his face and his hands. Presently he said, "Dere are many ways in which t'world is a better place wit'out Ahzrukhal in it. But it was a significant contributing factor."

"I see," Xen said.

And she did see.

_It fits with what he said earlier, _she thought. _Maybe he knew a girl when he was younger, and something happened to her; or maybe a girl was kind to him somewhere in that Hell where he grew up. Upbringing can affect us oddly. I know _I _would find it harder to watch a robot be destroyed than most people in the Capital Wasteland would. _

"So was Ahzrukhal the only employer you've killed after your contract was sold?" Xen asked.

"Yes," said Charon.

"One overdosed, one attacked you, and one you killed because he was a monster... I suppose a sick adolescent with an overstuffed head isn't anywhere near the worst you've seen," Xen said.

Charon, looking stolidly down at her, apparently had no comment on this. Xen sighed silently.

_Wetware logic malfunction._

_Just because he'll suffer if I die doesn't mean he likes me, _she reminded herself_. Maybe he hates everyone he works for, with that contract around his neck like a shock collar._

"All right. We'll move out as soon as it's dark outside," she said.

It was two whole days before they were attacked by super mutants.


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: I could make an entire FO3 screenshot album of nothing but Charon attacking super mutants with his combat knife even though I've given him massive guns and ammo. No idea why. _

_Super mutants using wire to tie prisoners is from the game, and in game it looks to be fairly fine in gauge, even though this would arguably be very difficult for super mutants to use considering the disproportionately large size of their fingers. But then, it's also canonical that Fawkes can use a computer with human-sized keys, and I still have no idea how _that's _possible (in _TFW: Thistle _I just assume he hunts and pecks with one finger at a time, but even that seems unlikely)._

19

Perhaps thirty miles North of the grocery store, Xen caught sight of a looming shadow. A few minutes later they came to rocky ground. A miniature badland loomed out of the dry landscape, jagged peaks standing up ten or fifteen feet. Changeling's mapping had no topographical features, and there was no way to know how far it stretched to either side. The outcroppings of dull brown stone went on as far as Xen could see. The risen moon gave enough light for her to see a long way with her goggles off.

Xen's first reaction was relief, gratitude for some structure to break up the terrifying, endless sweep of dark sky overhead. Then thought overpowered the agoraphobia and she realized what an obstacle they presented. She looked at the sharp rocks with some dismay.

"A small additional power expenditure would enable me to gain enough altitude to survey the area," said Changeling.

"Cloak your sensor light," Xen said.

"Acknowledged." The light dimmed, and there was a soft _whuff-whuff-whuff _as Changeling's exhaust jets fired alternately. The cargo net tipped back as the packbot rocked to one side, then shot upward with an additional jet. She stabilized at about twenty feet up, rocking awkwardly.

_I didn't give her much in the way of attitude jets, _Xen recognized. _But then, it's already a pretty sophisticated use of her existing power sources to get even _that _high when I didn't design her to fly._

The robot jerked in a rough circle, cargo net swinging precariously, then sank slowly back to her normal altitude.

"The outcrop continues for several miles to the North, West and East," Changeling said. "We could circumvent it to the West with the least loss of time, but it would still be a detour of some hours."

Xen twitched at the sudden movement as Charon whirled the shotgun off his back.

"Dis place is not safe," he said.

"Can we afford the delay, Changeling?" Xen asked quietly, looking around. She couldn't see any unfamiliar heat signature, but anything could be hiding back in the rocks, out of sight and cloaked by that enormous thermal mass.

"Affirmative," said Changeling. "Particularly since time would certainly be lost in climbing the rocks and treating resultant injuries to you. You are inexperienced, and Charon will only be able to assist you so far."

"Around it is," said Xen. They turned to their left and followed the long line of the rocks. A rough foot path was evident in the dust. Others had apparently found this route easier as well. One or two hoofprints suggested pack animals might have been the reason. Charon did not put away his shotgun. His attention seemed to be mostly on the rocks to their right. Out to the left stretched the Wasteland between them and the distant Metro station. It was bare of anything but small rocks and bushes, hiding nothing.

Then Charon said, "Be cautious," and turned to climb up into the rocks.

"Wait!" hissed Xen. "What is it?" Her frantically searching eyes could find no heat signatures, no reflected gamma. There might have been a movement just there...

Charon turned, squatting on a boulder. "Mutants," he whispered back.

"Should I run?" Xen asked.

"It will do no good," said Charon. "Dey will certainly be faster dan you. Please let me deal wit dis."

_Please?_

"Do it," Xen said, feeling her stomach churn. "Come back alive."

He turned and vanished into the rocks.

"Changeling, full stealth," Xen whispered, and huddled down against a rock. The packbot went transparent as she engaged the chameleon field, making her nearly invisible against the landscape.

A minute later, Xen heard the loud report of the combat shotgun. There was an answering roar, a guttural sound that seemed to fill the world and shake the ground under her moccasins:

"_FOUND YOU!"_

She heard the sound of giant feet running from somewhere out in the rocks as she crouched against the cold side of her boulder. Noise echoed from the stone and made direction impossible to determine. There was shouting, shouting in inhumanly deep voices with short, rough words. She dared not move far enough to look, and she would not be able to _feel _a warm body until it was right in front of her.

An enormous shape, more than ten feet tall and wider than Xen's height, sprang from among the rocks.

"HEY!" snarled a thunderous bass, and a giant hand snatched her up as she made to scramble away. "I found another one," the super mutant said, only a little more quietly than before. Xen could not cover her ears; his grip pinned her arms to her sides and there was no way to move them, no way at all.

"Firing," said Changeling's voice, and the mutant grunted as the laser made a thin red line between its head and the invisible packbot. Xen gasped as the giant's grip tightened, squeezing the air out of her lungs. One more second and her ribs would crack -

The super mutant relaxed its grip slightly as it turned and bounded away into the rocks, still holding Xen. She stared up at the steaming black mark on its bald skull. Its skin was green, stretched tight over its bones and its enormous musculature. Up this close, it stank of something strange and chemical, like an uncontained acid/base reaction or an organic distillation left too long. The wound hardly bled at all. The laser had cauterized where it cut, though it seemingly had not penetrated far.

A lipless mouth grinned down at her. Its teeth were oddly straight and even beneath its yellow slit-pupiled eyes. "Better keep you fresh," it told her. Xen stared back in fascinated horror, struggling to breathe as the mutant scrambled up and through the maze of stone. After a moment it let go with one hand so that it could assist itself to climb, but that didn't do anything for Xen. Its other hand was big enough to fit all the way around her waist, and its grip was stronger than a robot's. She pawed at its fingers without effect. Xen was glad she had been walking with her goggles off. They would surely have been shaken free from her head instead of just bouncing around her neck.

_It's moving fast, _she recognized, with the small part of her mind that had not yet given in to total, petrified terror. _Changeling won't be able to catch up in this terrain. And I haven't heard Charon's gun go off again._

_I may just be about to die._

But apparently that wasn't the mutant's plan. After a minute's frantic scrabbling, with Xen's world a shaken kaleidoscope of brown stone and dark blue sky, the mutant climbed down into a clear space. Weeds had been trampled down all around, so Xen could clearly see the white bones that lay here and there. Some had bits of red gristle stuck to them still. A net bag full of unnameable wet red things sat in a lump off to one side. The scene was stark and terrible in the moonlight, but Xen could not smell any stench of recent death. She couldn't smell anything except super mutant. She didn't even feel nauseous until she noticed the pile of bloody clothes with the guns, ammunition and stimpaks laid out neatly on top of it.

The mutant must have felt her shudder. It laughed, an indescribably and painfully loud sound. "Got plans for you," it said, and thumped her down onto the ground so hard that she bounced. She came down on one shoulder blade, powerless to stop her head from snapping back against the hard ground. For a dizzying instant, she was sure her skull had fractured. When her vision cleared, the mutant was holding her hands behind her with one finger and thumb as it wound something around her wrists with the other. She was on her knees without being sure how she had come there.

_Wire, _Xen thought, and felt it dig in cruelly as the mutant tightened it. Waves of pain radiated through her skull, sapping the strength from her legs.

"Huh," grunted the super mutant. A giant finger swiped at her bonds, and she stared dumbly as it lifted a black smear of hemolymph to its tongue. "Tastes bad."

"What you got?" demanded another mutant's voice, and a second creature leaped down into the hollow with an earth-shaking _thump. _It held a rough club made of wood in one hand. The weapon was longer than Xen was tall. "Can't catch that other one. Too fast."

"This one's got weird blood," reported the first mutant. "We better take it to the Vats, see what - "

Xen had never been so glad to hear the combat shotgun. The second mutant staggered back, roaring in pain and fury, and then there was a second shot and its eye exploded in gore. It charged around in a full circle, bounded against a rock, and fell on its back. It did not get up again.

"Whatsa matter?" demanded Charon's voice from behind her. "Can't stand da sight'a yer own blood?" The voice was not Charon's ordinary one. The accent was heavier.

"I'll get you!" said the super mutant, and leaped to its feet, scooping up its fallen companion's club.

"Keep firing," said Charon in a very different accent, and the shotgun boomed again. The mutant threw up an enormous arm to protect its face, and a tiny fountain of gore exploded from its biceps. Xen could not get her legs under her. The best she could do was scramble back against the nearest rock, out of the way. She looked up again in time to see Charon step onto the flat with his combat knife in his hand. His lips moved in some ongoing internal dialogue, but she couldn't hear it over the mutant's thunderous breathing.

Xen stretched her hands against the wires. Her fingers were wet.

_I'm bleeding. This isn't heavy-gauge wire, I wonder where they got it..._

The creature had been in a hurry when it tied them. Maybe she could get free. She squirmed, trying desperately to get loose without drawing attention. There wasn't much danger of that. The super mutant was trying to club Charon. The big Ghoul ghosted easily out of the way, and splinters flew as the club hit a rock instead. Charon darted in and inflicted a broad slash on the super mutant's upper leg, cutting through its rough trousers and green flesh in one blow.

"Ya like dat?" Charon snarled at the mutant. It roared in response and tried to stamp on him. Xen's hands were slippery with blood, but she had managed to slide one free. She shook the wires off the other, wiped both hands awkwardly on her shirt, and stumbled toward the pile of discarded clothes.

_I have to do something, _she thought blurrily. _It will kill him. _She snatched up the pistol from the top of the pile. It seemed ridiculously heavy. She had to use both hands to hold it. She cudgeled her reluctant brain as she stared at it, trying to remember what she'd read.

_The hammer has to be back. Which part is the hammer? _She finally settled on the little metal tab on the back of the barrel. It clicked satisfyingly into place. Charon had just tried and failed to hamstring the super mutant. Xen forced herself not to wince in sympathy as it succeeded in hitting him a glancing blow, knocking him back against a boulder. She heard the breath leave his lungs with an _oof. _Even then, he did not drop the combat knife.

"Charon!" screamed Xen. He was doubled halfway over and didn't seem to hear her. The super mutant turned ponderously to stare at her. "I'm tired of having nightmares about things _you _kill!"

Time stopped. She knew her heart was pounding, yet she was certain a second passed between each pair of beats, so slow and clear she could tell systolic from diastolic. The mark where the laser had hit the mutant seemed enormous under the waning moon. It filled her universe, one black pit in an acre of green skull. Xen hauled the pistol up as high as she could in both hands, pointed it as if it were one of her digits, and jerked at the trigger with slippery fingers.

The blast nearly deafened her, the flash turned her vision to strobing black and white, and the thing kicked in her hands as if it were alive. Time sped up with that one impact, stunning her. The gun jerked straight up, yanking her hands back over her head. She regained her balance just in time to be knocked over by the earthquake as the super mutant hit the ground.

Xen lay curled on her side for a moment. She was dimly aware that she was still convulsively clutching the gun. Her vision seemed to flash on and off in time with the pain in her skull. Her hands shook as she forced the fingers to let go of the hot metal. She took a deep breath, coughed at the stink of gunpowder, and shoved herself up on one elbow. Her whole body felt bruised. Vision wavered again, steadied on a pair of worn leather boots.

Charon went heavily to one knee in front of her. Shotgun and knife were present, sheathed and clean. Heat radiated from him, impinging on the fact that she felt suddenly cold. Xen looked past him at the grinning face of the super mutant. It had a much larger hole in its skull than before.

"I hit it," she said. She sat up all the way, wrapping her arms around herself. She looked back at Charon. He still knelt there, just looking at her. His temperature was a little higher than normal, and a glow of heat around his chest said something was wrong there. "You're hurt," she said.

"My injuries are minor," said Charon. He shook his head, dislodging one last flake of dry skin from his cheekbone. His face was raw and glistening under the distant moon.

"Good thing I ordered you to stay alive," Xen said.

She giggled. There was only a little hysteria in the sound.


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N: People in books and movies, particularly action heroes, frequently shrug off multiple broken ribs. This is both ridiculous and dangerous – none of these he-men ever die of a punctured organ._

20

Xen forced herself to stop laughing after a few seconds. It hurt her chest, and anyhow, Charon seemed to be reacting oddly again. His temperature was rising as he looked at her. She wondered what he was reaching for in back of his belt.

_Maybe he needs to reload his shotgun. Things are more serious than I think they are. I'm not thinking clearly. And something is wrong with my eyes. _She could feel her inner eyelids flickering in and out with her pulse, totally beyond her control.

"Find Changeling," Xen said.

"I am here," said Changeling's voice, and a moment later the packbot suddenly appeared up among the rocks as her stealth field vanished. Xen watched, shivering, as the bot dropped over the edge of a small precipice and settled into a steady hover at ground level. She glided serenely forward, easily circumventing the dead super mutant. The other corpse was somewhere behind them. Xen found herself strangely undisturbed by this.

"Run first aid subroutine," Xen said.

Changeling hummed. "Pupil response is consistent with concussion. The involuntary nictation is probably a response to head injury as well. Thermal scan indicates a possible subdural hematoma. Please hold still." Xen sat obediently as Changeling dropped the cargo net and brought an arm around with a gleaming needle at the tip. She chose not to watch it approaching her forehead. It stung, but the pain was hardly noticeable when compared with her increasing headache. It dwindled away as the stim began to heal her, leaving her dizzy and weak. The deep ligature marks in her wrists were partly closed, but she felt them seeping. There was a hiss as Changeling rotated out the empty stimpak for a full one.

"Administering second dose," Changeling said, and poked her again. This time the pain went completely away. Xen felt the wounds in her wrists slide shut, the bruises on her body fading. She sat up straighter as her mind cleared. Charon's temperature was normal again, except for four roughly parallel bars of increased heat in his lower chest. She might have imagined the change, except that his face was now naked of flesh. Muscle and tendon shifted around his dull eyes, a perfect anatomical diagram. He stared at the ground, apparently awaiting instructions.

"Stimpaks cannot recover your lost blood, however," said the packbot. "And hemolymph does not have identical clotting properties with human blood."

"I know," Xen said. "Scan Charon." She felt tired and ill, but she was able to control her inner lids now.

_At least I haven't had any post-traumatic flashes. This was terrifying, but it wasn't like anything else that's ever happened to me – not like the Raiders or the Doctors dying. _She laughed at herself, silently and internally only. _Ha. I'll probably have flashbacks to _this.

"Thermal scan indicates probability of broken ribs," said Changeling. "Other injuries are limited to tissue abrasion and extensive bruising."

"Oh," Xen said. "I wondered what the hot spots were. Treat him." Charon raised his head.

"I have stimpaks," he said.

"Save them for an emergency," Xen said.

"If dat is your order," Charon said. He did not resist as the packbot's arm approached the side of his neck. Xen watched curiously as tissue crept back over his cheeks and brow. It was dry and brown as parchment, but he looked less vulnerable with it there.

Changeling rose slightly in the air and rotated, scanning the hollow. "The Meta-Human's injury is not consistent with infliction by shotgun rounds," she observed.

"No, that was me," Xen said. "I found this gun in the pile of things they left." She waved weakly at the big pistol where it lay on the ground. She couldn't imagine picking it up again. "Help me up, Charon."

The Ghoul stood up gracefully and offered her a leather-gloved hand that was much larger than her own. Xen took it and was pulled gently to her feet. Charon waited quite calmly as she clung to his forearm with her other hand, finding her balance. He had no sleeve on his left arm. It was warm and very dry, like paper held up to a light. Xen felt as if her head were floating above her shoulders.

_Blood loss, like Changeling said, _she diagnosed silently_. I'm not going to be able to walk out of here tonight._

"You appear to have hit a half-inch target on the first shot with an unfamiliar weapon," Changeling said.

"It seemed... really... big all of a sudden," Xen said. "Everything sort of slowed down. I thought it was because of the head injury." She let go of Charon's arm, then had to grab at it again to keep from falling over. Her head bumped against his biceps.

_Good thing Changeling already stimmed me, or that would've hurt, _she thought, apropos of nothing_. His arm is about as soft as a bot's chassis... My mind is wandering still. I don't like my chances of getting _anywhere _like this._

"Changeling, are we safe here?" she asked.

"Affirmative," said Changeling. "If a third Meta-Human were nearby, it would have attacked us by now. And in any case, space is inadequate for a larger group."

"Wait," Xen said, suddenly recalling an earlier point in the conversation. "Charon?"

"Yes," the Ghoul said. Xen stepped carefully away from him so that she could look up at his face. She could keep her balance all right, now that she'd had a minute to equilibrate.

"You said you have stimpaks," she said.

_Which I should have known already, because I overheard him talking about it, but there's no reason to bring that up._

"Yes," said Charon.

"Why didn't you use them on yourself before?" Xen asked. "Why did you wait?"

"I had no instructions t'do so," Charon said. "I could not derefore use a medical asset for my own benefit."

"A medical asset," Xen said. "So that doesn't include the flamer you used back in the subway."

"Dat is correct."

"So if you couldn't use them on yourself, why were you carrying them?" Xen asked.

"In case of injury to you when t'robot was absent or incapacitated," Charon said.

"So why didn't you use them on - " She stopped. "You _were _going to use them on me. You were reaching for one when Changeling got here, weren't you."

"Yes, I was," Charon said.

Xen just stared at him for a moment. He looked back with no indication of any emotion.

"Changeling," Xen said. "Do broken ribs hurt?"

"According to my first aid data bank, the experience of multiple costal fractures is excruciating," said the packbot in her cool, flat voice. "Pain is usually described as sharp or stabbing, and increases with rapid respiration, tension, or movement. With compound fractures, there is the additional danger that a detached fragment will puncture a lung or other organ."

"All that, and you were going to use your chems on _me_," Xen said. She shook her head slowly. "I shouldn't be surprised. The contract terms wouldn't allow you to behave any other way, would they? Not without orders."

"Not wit'out orders," agreed Charon.

"When I'm in danger, I need you to be functional more than I need to be," Xen said, thinking aloud.

"I can function wit' broken ribs," Charon said. "I have done so before."

Xen stared at him again.

"I'll bet you have," she said finally. "But even if Changeling is damaged to the point of total dysfunction, we can recover her chems. Show him the emergency button, Changeling."

The packbot rocked slightly in the air, displaying a narrow, deep recess on the bottom of her saucer shield. There was a very small button inside it, almost too small to see.

"It has to be pushed with something thin and sharp," Xen said. "But hitting it when she's powered down will eject all of her internal supplies. So stim yourself first next time, all right?"

"I will obey," Charon said.

Xen tried to think. Concentration was an effort. "Are there any other assets you have that you can't use without a direct order?"

"Not at t'moment," Charon said.

"Hm. But it's always possible you'll find something else useful, or run into something you can use that I can't..." Xen rubbed her drying hands on her jeans. "Can I order you to use your own judgment?"

"Dat is a very broad instruction," Charon said.

Xen raised her scanty eyebrows as she looked at him.

_He just tried to warn me against giving him too much leeway. Changeling would never do that in a million years, because it's an _emotional _decision. _

_I'll bet I'm about to succeed in surprising him._

Xen smiled briefly. "I trust you," she said.

There was a flicker of heat in his face, there and gone in an instant.

_Got you, _Xen thought. _I wonder if anyone has ever said that to him. _Then she realized with a small pang, _No one's ever said it to me._

"You are instructed to use your own judgment when deciding what assets to use offensively or defensively while under attack," Xen said. "This includes both those in your current possession and anything you might find in future. Tell me about them if you think it's important that I know. Otherwise, I'll let you do your job. Do you understand?"

"I unnerstand," he said.

"Changeling," Xen said. "Do you think you could do something with the bodies? And that?" She pointed at the bag of gory remains. "I can sleep with the bones here."

"Firing," said Changeling. The mess flared up briefly under the laser's heat, then disintegrated. A lingering smell of burned meat remained. The packbot turned to deal with the super mutants. Xen, correctly judging that this was likely to take a long time, wearily picked up the pistol and went to look at the pile of soiled clothes.

There were two other guns there, one long and thin-barreled and one smaller than the big revolver. It had a boxy shape and a thin muzzle.

"Charon," she said. "Can you tell me what these are?"

"You killed the super mutant with a .44 magnum revolver." The Ghoul pointed. "Dis is a sniper rifle, which fires .308 rounds. Dis is a semiautomatic .22 pistol."

"Sniper rifle," Xen said. "It's for shooting from far away?"

"Yes," said Charon.

"Tomorrow could you teach me to use it?" Xen asked. "And the .22? I think the .44 is too big for me."

"I could do dat," Charon said.

When she woke up the next day, dreamless hours after sunrise, he did just that. Xen watched and listened as he explained the parts of each weapon, what they were for, and how to use the safety catches and loading mechanisms. Changeling hovered very close by, monitoring them.

"The safety must have been already off when I picked up the .44 yesterday," Xen said.

"Dat is very likely, since t'person who had it was undoubtedly killed while using it," Charon said. "The sniper rifle has a scope. The .22 just has dis notch on t'barrel for sighting."

Xen sighted down each barrel. She had to leave her goggles on, but even so, she saw only a blur on the other side of the rifle's crosshairs.

"I can't focus through this," she said. "Can you?"

Charon took the rifle and held it up with a practiced motion. One rheumy red eye squinted through the scope.

"I can," he said.

"It must be my eyes," Xen said.

"Den it is probable dat you will not be able to use it," Charon said. As Xen turned to put the rifle down she heard him murmur, "Hardly an unexpected development." The enunciation was sharp, the accent clipped.

Xen turned quickly. "Who was that?"

"I do not unnerstand," Charon said. His voice was ordinary.

"Sometimes you talk to me," Xen said. "And sometimes there's someone else talking to you."

"Oh," said Charon. "You noticed dat." He didn't seem worried, but then, he never did.

"Hasn't any other employer noticed it?" Xen said.

"I have previously been ordered not t'speak except when spoken to by my employer," Charon said. "Dat is all."

"How long has it been happening?" Xen asked.

"For a very long time," Charon said.

_Ahzrukhal said they brainwashed him, _Xen thought._ And none of the methods I've read about were nice. People develop all kinds of coping mechanisms when we're faced with trauma, don't we? Even I do, and I'm not all human. I seem to be learning to be my own scope._

"I see," Xen said. "Well, I'm not going to worry about it. They seem to help you rather than hurt you. Is that your perception?"

"Yes," said Charon.

"Then they must not be a bad thing. Show me how to reload the .22."


	21. Chapter 21

_A/N in response to unsigned review: No, I meant attitude jets, not altitude. Attitude jets control the attitude of an aircraft (or robot, in this case), which means its direction of tilt in the air. Changeling thus has to use alternate firing of her hover jets to tilt herself from side to side, resulting in the awkward process previously cited._

21

Practice with the .22 was slow and frustrating. Xen picked up managing and reloading the gun quickly, even deftly, but those were simple mechanical processes. She had done more when she was ten years old and working on her first robot. She could work the safety. She could pull the trigger and manage the kick adequately. She could even, once Changeling had scanned the area and more or less cleared them for live rounds, hit a dirt target with reasonable accuracy ("Do not hit d'rocks or dere will be ricochet," Charon said).

What she couldn't do was repeat the previous day's sensation of frozen time and magnified vision.

_Maybe it _was _because of the head injury, _Xen thought. _Maybe I hallucinated it. Or maybe it was just a freak. Sometimes even ordinary humans have moments of unexpected speed or strength from nothing but adrenaline. I know I read that somewhere._

_Changeling is carrying epinephrine. _Xen cut off that line of speculation sharply, reproaching herself. _No. That's for emergencies, and the side effects are too harsh to experiment with it. I will not be that stupid._

"There is one important thing Charon has not told you," Changeling told her late in the afternoon, when they had stopped the lessons to eat and drink. "No doubt because he learned it very early and takes it as given."

"What's that?" Xen asked. The sun shone hot and bright, and she had to keep her second lids closed behind her goggles even while sitting in the shadow of the rocks. Charon squatted nearby, eating dried beef quickly and very neatly. They had piled the bones and the bloody clothes together at the point furthest from where Xen slept. She had firmly declined using the skulls for target practice. There would never be a field station for these people, no cold and perfect sleep forever, but she could at least spare them that.

Xen picked at a package of cold macaroni and cheese with a steel fork from her single set of utensils. Bunni had taught her to eat with them, patient even when her long fingers were clumsy. The Doctors would never have thought of it.

"You are familiar with robots and tools," Changeling said. "A robot can perform many tasks. A tool may have many uses, or only one. My turret laser has multiple uses. The gun has only one. And it cannot discriminate who should or should not be killed. It has no artificial intelligence."

"Error processing response," Xen said. "I mean, it's kind of small for that anyway. There's not that much miniaturized tech around." She looked at the .22 where it lay beside her on the ground. Charon had found the leather belt and holster for it in the pile of clothes. It had taken a minute's precision work with Changeling's laser to shorten the belt and add a couple more holes so that it would fit Xen.

"Ah," Charon said. He licked the end of an ungloved finger, then looked at Xen directly. "She means dat real life is not target practice. You must not draw t'gun unless you're willing to kill wit' it. Ot'erwise it is worse dan being unarmed." His tone was matter-of-fact, only marginally more interested than usual.

"Acknowledged," Xen said quietly. "I mean, I understand."

"It does not matter what phrasing you use with Charon," Changeling said. "Observational data indicates that he assimilates new terms quickly for an organic being." Which was the closest to a compliment that Changeling could probably convey.

_Well, well._

"I don't want you to think I don't know you're a person," Xen said to the Ghoul.

"Dat is of no importance," Charon said. "And you do not consider it an insult to be treated like a mechanism. You sometimes speak as if you were one."

Xen sighed. "They have a lot of good points. They're very decisive. They think faster than any living person. And with the tech Robco came up with back before the War, they can last for human lifetimes. Probably even more lifetimes of something like me." She looked up at Changeling. "That reminds me. Don't I remember reading something about Ghouls and longevity? Something to do with chromosome length?"

"That depends upon the individual Ghoul," Changeling said. "Some make the conversion with no significant changes to their chromosomal repair enzymes. Some acquire the ability to regenerate chromosome length accurately, essentially preventing them from aging in the ordinary human manner."

"Oh." Xen looked at Charon. "So the reason I couldn't tell his age by looking might not be because he's a Ghoul, it might be because he's not actually aging. Are you immortal, Charon?"

"My Hayflick Limit has been tested," Charon said. "I was not informed of t'results."

"That seems cruel," Xen said.

"Some employers have undoubtedly assumed less intelligence on Charon's part than you are doing," Changeling said.

"You mean, less than you did when I bought his contract," Xen said.

"I can correct my observations based on new data," Changeling said. "Some humans cannot."

"Or they might not have wanted him to know he might eventually outlive them," Xen said. "I guess that wouldn't matter with the way the contract works, would it, Charon?"

"No," Charon said. "It does not."

"Changeling," Xen said. "Can you test Charon's chromosome regeneration?"

"Not without additional equipment," Changeling said. "In any case, it is not relevant to your current project."

"It might be to a later one," Xen said. "If I don't make it, I'm pretty sure Bunni and Tori have enough stored DNA to clone me. I 'd rather pass Charon's contract on to another Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid." She looked at the Ghoul. "I'm sorry, but you know too much about me and the Lab and the bots for me to let it fall to someone else. There's too much risk to them."

"Do not let sentimental thinking cloud your judgment further," Changeling said.

"Further?" Xen said.

"Even if you did not give orders for the transfer of Charon's contract, he would not be free. He must and will find another employer no matter what your fate."

"Is that right, Charon?" Xen asked him.

"Yes," Charon said.

"So I might as well will it to a clone as not," Xen said.

"If you are concerned about information in Charon's possession, you could give me orders to insure his death in the event of your own," Changeling said.

"That would be a poor return for services rendered," Xen said. "Besides,if I did have a clone, I'd want her to have an interactional model for other organic people from birth. One that _doesn't _involve them trying to kill her. If he survives me, I want Charon to remain very much alive. Assuming that I canwill the contract to someone who isn't born yet, that is."

"Dat is not provided for by t'contract's terms," Charon said. "But if my contract is in Changeling's possession, I will follow her orders until it is passed on. The effect would be the same."

Xen looked at him in surprise. "You didn't have to tell me that," she said.

"My contract will default to Changeling in the event of your death," Charon pointed out, with no more emphasis than usual. "I have no reason not t'share the information."

"Oh," Xen said. "I see. Changeling, orders follow. In the event of my death, continue to protect Charon in accordance with your primary directives. Order him to accompany you back to the Lab and then transfer his contract to Bunni. Bunni is to transfer it to any clone of mine when she thinks the clone is old enough. Acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling. "Why Bunni?"

"Bunni can come closer to thinking like an organic than you or Tori can," Xen said. "She'll understand what I'm doing and why. I don't want anything fatal to conveniently happen to Charon before the clone grows up. Bunni's a Robco Robobrain," Xen explained to Charon. "She raised me more than anyone else did. She'll probably do most of the raising of the clone, too."

"Your makers were not involved wit' dis?" Charon asked unexpectedly.

"Not really, no," Xen said. "I was their project." She hesitated, but he was looking directly at her – not at the ground.

_It wasn't a casual question. I don't think Charon knows how to ask them. But then, he probably knows what it's like to be a project._

"They built an artificial womb specifically so they wouldn't bond with me hormonally," she said. "I know that was Dr. Graber's reasoning, at least. Her notes say she was afraid getting pregnant would fuzz up her reasoning. But they knew babies can't live without contact, and they wanted to see if I could survive a few years, so Dr. Montalban programmed Bunni to take care of me. He even padded her chassis."

"The Robobrains are normally combat models," Charon said.

"That's right," Xen said. "The AI on both – I guess all three – of them is special. Dr. Montalban was very good at his job." She smiled thinly. "Changeling wouldn't be such a pain if he hadn't been. _I _intended her to just be a packbot with a targeting system."

"That would have been prejudicial to your interests," Changeling said.

"I'm not convinced of that," Xen said.

"You must be at least partly convinced, or you would have erased me," Changeling said. "Or perhaps that is merely your reluctance to destroy what you regard as another person, even a subservient one."

"You and Tori killed Camel," Xen pointed out.

"I did not. She is in backup," Changeling said.

"Then you're probably right," said Xen. "I don't like you. But I still won't kill you until or unless I have to."

"You killed the super mutant," Changeling said.

"I had to," Xen said. "I thought he was going to kill Charon. And without Charon, I'd be dead and you'd be scrap as of weeks ago."

"I must now agree," Changeling said.


	22. Chapter 22

22

That evening, they moved on. Charon helped Xen climb through the rocks back to the outer edge of the outcrop. The last drop was only four or five feet, but she still hesitated, unused to jumping or falling any distance.

"Charon?" said Xen.

Charon reached up, put his hands around her waist, and lifted her down to the ground.

"Thanks," Xen said breathlessly. "I'm not very good with heights. Even little ones." She was sweating from the pathetic amount of climbing she'd done. Changeling passed them, hovering ten feet up or so, and then dropped down to her normal level with a small shake of the cargo net. They were back on the dirt track.

"We should have some miles of safe travel," Changeling said. "Super mutants tend to clear their immediate area of life that is not associated with them."

"Associated," Xen said, trying to recall her reading. "You mean like centaurs?" She'd seen one or two pictures. She couldn't imagine associating the image of mythological horse-men with the crawling horrors that came out of long-term FEV exposure. But then, it was reasonable to expect the average sense of humor to be darker out in the Wasteland.

"Affirmative," Changeling said.

"Don't those spit corrosives?" Xen asked. She started along the trail, which was now badly scuffed.

"Affirmative."

"Charon, have you ever seen one?" Xen asked.

"More dan once," Charon said. "Dey move very slowly."

_Meaning they're easy to shoot, _Xen deduced.

"So you didn't get spat on," she said.

"On t'contrary," Charon said. "But the burns were not severe."

"Things don't slow you down much, do they?" Xen said. There was no response to this. Charon evidently knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

The next two nights and days passed without much incident. After the first they were past the outcrop and back into gently rolling hills, dry and almost bare. A little green was showing here and there, new evidence that Project Purity was working as planned. Xen practiced drawing and targeting when they stopped during daylight. She wanted to save the .22's ammo. She did have flashback nightmares, but they were not as bad – and in some of them, she was holding the gun.

The third night they were on their way up a small rise when Charon raised his head.

"Be cautious," he said. Xen could just make out a distant heat signature through the bulk of the hill.

"Changeling," Xen said. "Stay here. Turn off your light. Charon, don't shoot anything until I see what it is."

"As you wish," Charon said.

"Cloaking sensor," responded the packbot. Xen dropped to her belly and squirmed up to the top of the little hill so she could see over. Charon crept up beside her without making a sound.

An ancient truck sat on the flat down below, next to a pond that was hardly more than a mudhole. It had a short trailer with an intact canopy in back. The gate was up, and a man was sitting on the back fender. Xen saw the glow at the end of his cigarette as he smoked. To her eyes, unlidded and without goggles, it lit up his face and chest intermittently. She could see the white claw painted on his black combat armor. His hair was shaved close to his head, and his face had a thin growth of stubble.

The cigarette also reflected from the barrel of the long gun that lay beside him on the truck bed. Xen received a brief impression of movement from behind him. A grunt and a laugh, both in male voices, drifted up to them. Xen made out maybe two, maybe three heat signatures inside; they were too close together to be sure.

"This is an enemy?" Xen whispered.

"Yes," Charon whispered back. "Talon Company mercenaries."

"I thought they weren't common out here."

"Dey are not," Charon replied.

"I want a better view," Xen said. She crawled as quietly as she could backward and around the hill. There wasn't much chance the man would detect her if she didn't make too much noise. She was pretty sure the light from the cigarette would make it harder for him to see out into the dark.

From her new position she could see inside the truck. There were two more mercenaries inside. One was kneeling on a woman's arms, pinning them above her head. She was naked, and her skin was smooth and sallow. Xen could only see part of her because the other man was in the way -

Xen crawled backward as fast as she could until she was behind the hill again.

"Charon," she hissed. "I've never had sex. Does that look consensual to you?"

Charon belly-crawled to her previous position, examined the situation, and crept back.

"No," he said.

Xen narrowed her eyes, half in anger and half in pain.

_This is what Tori was afraid would happen to me. This woman didn't have a Charon to protect her. Not even a robot with a laser._

"Kill them," she said. "Leave the woman. Tell me when it's secure."

"I am yours t'command," Charon said. He stood gracefully, whirled the shotgun off his back, and stepped up over the hill. Xen listened to the soft _click-click _of the gun being cocked, and then she drew her new pistol and crawled up to where she could see what was happening.

Charon was halfway down the hill before the mercenary noticed the movement in the dark. He started to reach for his gun. He had it raised about halfway when Charon blew his head into goo. The body thumped back against the truck bed and rebounded, sliding out onto the ground with the force of its own weight. Xen heard one of the others shout. Charon rolled to one side as a shot whipped past. She heard it impact harmlessly in the dirt, and then the Ghoul was up on one knee and firing again.

More shouting. A man in combat armor tried to jump out of the truck with a gun in one hand as he held his pants up with the other. This resulted in a predictable stumble. He didn't get a chance to right himself. Charon put up the gun with one hand as he drew his knife with the other. Two steps and one arm movement too quick to follow, and the mercenary lay twitching and gurgling with a cut throat.

"Good riddance," Charon said. He knelt to wipe the blade of the combat knife on the dead man's body armor. "Xen. Secure."

"I always forget how fast he is," Xen said. She sheathed the pistol, feeling suddenly clumsy. "Come on, Changeling."

Xen suppressed a wince at the stink of recent death as she came down the hill. She had thought she was ready for it this time, but the images were there waiting. Raiders bleeding on the concrete and blood spreading up the sleeve of Dr. Montalban's lab coat -

_No. I'm here now. I'm alive. I can do this._

She walked around the two corpses and looked into the truck. The third man sat slumped against the back wall. He was mostly without a head, and there was a wide, red splatter against the wall. Charon was consistent that way. The woman sat against one wall of the trailer with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. She stared out at Xen with no expression. She was stocky, with muscular arms and legs. Her face was a smooth oval, pale against the dark of the trailer's walls. An epicanthic fold across a corner of each eye gave them an almond shape. She didn't seem to notice the spatter of blood across her face and shoulder.

There was a steel collar around her neck. A single light blinked red on one side of it.

"I'm Xen," Xen said. "We won't hurt you."

"My name is Bell," said the woman. "Do you think you can get this collar off?" Her hair was black and cropped very short around her face and ears.

"I don't know," said Xen. "I'll look at it. Can you come out of there?"

"May I get my clothes?" asked Bell. "They made me take them off."

"Yes, of course," Xen said. "I'm sorry about the mess. You can change out here if you want to. We won't look."

"It doesn't matter," said Bell. She was surprisingly calm. Xen had expected rage, or tears, or an inability to respond, or at least a request that Charon move out of sight, but Bell didn't seem to care as she went to gather up her clothes. They lay piled in a corner, shielded from the gore by a pair of ammunition boxes. Even Bell's body temperature was calm, almost a full degree below Charon's normal one.

_That may be because she's smaller, and female. I don't have a lot of basis for comparison._

Xen turned away. Bell had not asked for privacy, but she didn't feel comfortable watching. Charon stood with his back to them, patiently scanning the horizon. "Changeling," Xen said. "Scan her."

"Temperature pattern is not consistent with any internal hemorrhage," Changeling said. "There is no circulatory disruption indicating shock. Pulse is slightly elevated. No indication of bruising."

"Really?" Xen asked. "How is that possible? He was kneeling right on her arms in combat armor."

"I don't bruise very easily," said Bell from behind them. "I am dressed now."

Xen turned. Bell now wore a ragged tee shirt, old jeans, and red canvas sneakers. She had no jacket.

"I'm sorry that this happened to you," Xen said. "I wish we'd got here sooner."

Bell shrugged. "They've done it every night since they caught me," she said. "I'm just glad you stopped them. I don't like it."

This seemed such an obvious understatement that Xen had to raise her eyebrows.

"Are you all right?" Xen asked.

"No," Bell said. She tugged at the collar around her neck. "It's this thing. It gives me a headache. I can't think straight."

"Will you let me look at it?" Xen asked.

"Yes," said Bell.

Xen stepped forward and was somewhat surprised to find Charon right beside her. Bell didn't seem bothered or even surprised, so Xen didn't say anything.

_She's acting strangely enough. And I don't know how she'll react when I touch her._

Bell appeared not to react at all as Xen probed and prodded the collar with her long fingers.

"Strange," she said. "I've heard that the slavers use explosive collars, but there's no place for a charge here. The power source is too small for it. Changeling, look at this." She moved aside so that the robot's sensor could examine the collar.

"There is a small sonic pulse emitted by a unit on the back of the collar," Changeling said. "It should be easily deactivated with a hand tool. I detect no security measures."

"All right. Let's try a screwdriver." Xen went to rummage through the bags under the cargo net until she found the one she had brought. Originally, she had planned to use it if Camel needed any maintenance. Now she held it in one hand as she pulled back the collar with the other. "Let me know if you can't breathe."

"It's all right," Bell said.

Xen found the tiny panel and managed to dig the screwdriver's flat edge inside it. She twisted sharply. There was a _snap. _A miniscule cylinder fell out. Xen picked it up and stepped back.

"Is that better?" she asked.

Bell stared at her with the same dull non-expression for a moment. Then her face contorted and she crumpled to her knees. Xen watched without understanding as she pressed both hands over her mouth. The woman made a long, hoarse exhalation of breath, a scream without noise. She did it again and again. The sound made a soft and hellish static in the quiet night.


	23. Chapter 23

_A/N: The properties I'm claiming for DCUVRAP sound unlikely until you consider that almost all of them are true of, for example, a foot-thick sheet of glass (which is liquid-proof, can be melted, but not quickly or easily, will not react with acids or bases, and can retard the progress of gamma particles). Ceramic would probably serve as well. The unrealistic part is that I'm claiming those properties for a flexible thin polymer, not that I'm claiming them for a single substance._

_Sorry about the update delay. I normally write in spurts and I'm entering a dry spell. Rest assured, the story will be finished.  
_

23

"Bell?" Xen said. "Changeling, did I do it wrong?"

"No," Changeling said. "It is probable that she is reacting to experiences she had while the collar was active."

"Is she going into shock?" Xen asked. "She's getting cooler instead of warmer."

"Negative. Temperature does not differ between her core and extremities," Changeling said.

At last, the silent screaming stopped. Bell lowered her hands to the collar. Thick fingers wrapped around it on either side. It snapped cleanly in half with a report like a gunshot.

"No!" Xen said, over the sound of Changeling's laser powering up. "Don't shoot her." She looked at Charon, but his shotgun was still on his back.

"_Error," _said Bell, and dropped the halves of the collar in order to put her hands over her mouth again. "Shit. _Error processing stimuli. Please schedule this unit for diagnostic. Error _goddammit to Hell _-"_

The static scream returned for a second, then cut off. Bell stood up slowly. She was three or four inches taller than Xen, on parallel with the adult women she had seen in Underworld. Xen saw with alarm that a light was blinking on and off in the back of one of her eyes, behind the black iris.

"Glitching," said Bell. Xen couldn't tell if she was speaking to them or to herself. "Always the damn glitching with new emotional stimuli, and on top of that I've got four days of gang rape to process and why the _fuck _did they do that? _Error._" She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. Xen winced. "Just because they can't damage my goddamn chassis doesn't mean they can't screw my interpersonal programming all to Hell. _Please schedule this unit for _Damn Commonwealth lab rats think that just because _they_ wouldn't fuck a cleanup assistance unit with an ugly DCUVRAP chassis _error. Error. Error."_

"What's happening?" Xen hissed at Changeling. "This isn't a normal response to sexual assault, is it?" She guessed that the word Bell had pronounced "deck-kewv-wrap" was an acronym, but only because it didn't make sense otherwise.

"Negative," said Changeling. "Not unless she is having a psychotic break, and that does not fit other available data."

"Bell?" Xen said. The woman was pacing back and forth, muttering to herself. The word _error _continued to recur. This went on for a few more seconds before Xen's voice seemed to penetrate.

Bell stopped and turned to look at her, suddenly and closely focused. "Did you say something?"

"Do you need a stimpak?" Xen asked lamely. "Or a drink of water or, or something?"

"No," Bell said. "I need a memory wipe followed by two weeks' work with a qualified tech in a dark room. But that's what I ran away from, isn't it? That's why I'm here."

"Where did you run away from?" Xen asked.

"The Institute," said Bell. She ran both hands through her short hair, ruffling it slightly. Muscle moved and slid under the skin of her arms. Her entire body was sturdy and plain, utilitarian. "It's in the Commonwealth up North. Getting out wasn't very hard. They never thought a CAU would come down with the existential uncertainty glitch."

"You've stopped saying _error,_" Xen said. "Why?"

"I'm responding to direct questions," Bell said. Her speech was rapid and a little flat in tone, but her voice was otherwise quite ordinary, her accent like that of any other Wastelander. "You canceled my auditory error processing. It's still running in background. I'm going to be about fifty percent sane for another twenty hours, maybe longer. I wasn't designed for sexual use by humans. I'm not even supposed to have to pass for one. The cleanup techs are mostly female and Asian, so the higher-ups thought it would be easier for them to work with me if I looked like this. Damn paternalistic of them, actually..."

"You mean you're a synthetic person," Xen said.

_Ah hah. I thought I remembered the word Commonwealth from somewhere. I wonder what "paternalistic" means. _

"Android," said Bell. "Although technically I'm a gynoid, but nobody uses that word_. _I'm a laboratory cleanup assistance unit. My designation is B2-09. Bell is a nickname. My total vocabulary was maybe a thousand words before I started glitching the first time. I wasn't supposed to be able to learn new things without direct software input. They must've been surprised as Hell when I left. Problem is, my base programming tends me toward social interaction and I'm bad at pretending to be human, and that made it easier for them to find me. Sorry about the chatter. It's part of the error subroutine."

"Um," Xen said. "That's okay. I'm Xen, by the way. This is Charon. The packbot is Changeling."

"Charon," Bell said. She folded her arms, shifting her weight to rest on one leg. "That seems appropriate. And Xen..." Bell raised a thin black eyebrow. "You have the wrong number of fingers on both hands. I saw it when you were taking out the collar's power source. And your eyes are different, too. I'd have pegged your skin tone for an indicator of poisoning or malnutrition in the course of normal diagnostics, but I'm guessing it's actually your natural one, right?"

"Right," said Xen cautiously.

"Well, that's one less thing to worry about. You're not going to turn me in," Bell said. She turned and paced, a few steps one way and then back the other.

"I'm not?" Xen said.

"It'd be damn stupid." Bell ran her hands through her hair again. "The Institute would just _love _to get their hands on whatever _you _are. Ha. I bet you're an independent experiment, right? Maybe something out of the Enclave before it blew up? You're about the right age. But that's not an Enclave-issued bot. Sorry, I know I'm digging myself in further here but I can't seem to shut up. I should do something to dispose of the bodies but every time I look at them I run another fucking error loop - "

"That's easy to fix," Xen said, glad to have her diverted away from this uncomfortable line of reasoning. "Changeling, burn them."

Bell watched with her arms folded tight as the packbot began reducing the corpses to ash with her laser.

"That's not an Enclave bot," she said. "It's a home build, isn't it."

"Yes, she is," Xen said. She bit her knuckle, trying to decide what to do. "Bell, we still have a long way to go tonight. Why don't you come with us?"

"You can't afford to let me go," Bell said, cutting right through this. "If I get caught for real somebody else will know you exist and what you probably are. They can damn well pull that right out of my head even if I don't want them to, you know."

"I guessed," Xen said.

Bell shivered again. "I'll go with you. I have nowhere else to go. You're not going to find me easy to dispose of if you kill me, though. DCUVRAP is damn tough to break down -"

"I don't want to hurt you," Xen said. "I don't want to hurt anyone. It's just that things don't work that way out here." She waved a hand vaguely, indicating the Wasteland and the Metro and everything else outside the Lab. "If you don't try to attack us, Charon and Changeling will leave you alone. I so order it."

"Acknowledged," Changeling said. She had finished with one body and was moving on to the next.

"I unnerstand," said Charon.

"I won't attack you," Bell said. "When I think about touching anything alive I go suboptimal for a whole second and believe me, in here that's a damn long time." She turned and started to pace again.

"I'll bet it is," Xen said. "For the bots that's a subjective eternity if they're stuck in a loop. I remember that."

"It's not quite as bad for me as for a bot," said Bell. "I have integrated organic components, so I'm slower. But bad enough."

"What's DCUVRAP?" Xen asked. Bell seemed less disturbed while she was talking.

_That could just be that she can't show external markers of her error processing and run interactions at the same time, of course, _Xen thought._ But let's hope._

"Dense corrosion and UV-resistant amorphous polymer," Bell said. She stopped pacing and turned to face Xen as she spoke. "The Institute's advanced humanoid models have organic flesh and blood. Those are useful when you have to pass for human, but they're a detriment in a cleanup assistance unit – too vulnerable to acid and radiation. The DCUVRAP looks more or less like skin, but it can't sweat and it has a very limited ability to grow hair. My hair and eyebrows are actually separate self-renewing components that grow out of my endoskeleton."

"And DCUVRAP is tougher than skin?" Xen asked, trying to assimilate all the information. Bell hadn't used a swear word in a couple of minutes. Maybe this _was _benefiting her.

"It's flameproof, heat-resistant, won't corrode even under 12M acid or base immersion, and is completely impenetrable to alpha, beta, gamma and ultraviolet radiation," Bell said. "It's fluid, cohesive, and can produce more of itself with minimal exposure to atmospheric carbon. Holes in it repair themselves. Not in a way that can pass for human healing, of course. I don't have blood. I'm semisolid all the way down to endoskeleton, and _that's _coated titanium."

"I see," Xen said. "So part of the reason they want you back is that you were expensive to build."

"Very," Bell said dryly. "Probably several million caps if you count the hours of work the techs and programmers had to put in."

"So they'll hire more mercenaries," Xen said. "Given their investment in you."

"Maybe," said Bell. "If I'm lucky. Your large friend here took them out in less than a minute. You won't get off so easy if they manage to free up one of the A3 units long enough to look for me. If that happens, I'd suggest you run, but he'll have orders to kill anyone who knows what I am. And he'll be aggressive about finding that out."

"He?" said Xen, with a sinking feeling.

"The A series are all masculine. They didn't think a combat gynoid would be taken seriously outside the Commonwealth," said Bell. "Which would result in unnecessary delays, combat wear and tear on the unit, and so on."

"And you can't defend yourself," Xen said. "Can you."

"Task complete," Changeling said. A faint drift of ash and a fading smell was all that remained of the mercenaries.

"I can protect myself from harm only if it doesn't involve harming a human," Bell said. "That's base programming. I can get around it given enough time and the right kind of logic, but I'll hesitate and it'll create more internal errors. Either way, I can protect myself from an A3. I'm stronger and more durable. That won't make a bit of difference against a faster unit with a gun, of course. Bullets _do _penetrate DCUVRAP. There's a reason why they send those units after the rest of us, you know."

"I see," Xen said.

"Shall I reiterate why bringing her with us is not a wise choice?" Changeling asked.

"You think your laser can break down the stuff she's made of?" Xen asked.

There was a flicker as Changeling's turret scanner activated. "Negative. My spectrometry functions are primitive, but they confirm the android's statements."

"Call her Bell," Xen said. "And assess. If we kill her and leave her here, if we hide the body, can we prevent an agent of the Commonwealth from finding her and tracking us?"

"Negative," said Changeling after a moment. "An android designed to hunt other androids will logically have means to locate one that is concealed, including a defunct unit. Tracking us will be somewhat more difficult, but again, if that is a base function of the series then it will not be impossible."

"So if it's going to track us down no matter what, isn't it better to have another functional android with us?" Xen asked.

Changeling was silent for a moment.

"I think you're being unreasonably stubborn about this," Xen said. "Respond."

"You assume that bringing Bell with us is safer than leaving her here," Changeling said. "I resist that conclusion. She is still not stable."

"It's the best we can do, for now," Xen said. "Charon, what do you think?"

"In light of current information, I must agree wit' Xen," Charon said.

Bell shivered again. "You think you're faster than an A3," she deduced quietly. "Let's hope you never have to find out."

"I couldn't agree more," Xen said. "Come on. We'd better get moving."


	24. Chapter 24

_A/N: I'm dilating the amount of time that the Rad-X lasts. I think we can probably agree that nobody would develop an anti-radiation drug that lasted thirty seconds per dose._

_Of course, it didn't even occur to me that Bell shouldn't even logically have anatomy that would allow her to _be _raped until Thug-4-Less mentioned it. Oops. I can of course come up with a couple of possible explanations ex post facto, but I can't see Xen asking about that, so I'll just have to ask you to suspend disbelief again..._

24

Before dawn, they were in sight of a long treeline at the base of rolling hills. Old nightmares and new ones chased themselves through Xen's head that day when they stopped to rest. She woke up before dusk, fist in her mouth to stifle a scream. She felt behind her for the big rock in whose shadow she lay and scooted back against it, even though it was uncomfortably warm. Her goggles were still on.

The last she remembered of the dream was Charon coming toward her with the combat knife, saying something about the contract. There had been a super mutant as big as a house behind him. It was about to obliterate them both with a stomp of one enormous foot.

She shook her head to clear it. Charon caught the movement and turned to look. He sat slumped in the shade of the same rock, close enough to touch. For an instant she caught a glimpse of his lips moving in some internal dialogue, and then he straightened abruptly and looked down at her.

_Waiting for orders. Just like always. _She felt a peculiar warmth at the thought.

Changeling hovered near them, her teacup chassis so dull with dust that it barely reflected the sun. The packbot's shadow stretched out long and black toward the East, merging with the shadow of the rock. Xen could hear pacing footsteps nearby.

"Is that Bell I hear?" she asked.

"Yes," Charon said. "Apparently she does not sleep."

"Changeling, what time is it?"

"Approximately seven o'clock p.m.," said Changeling. "The sun will be setting shortly."

"All right. Charon, help me up." Xen waited for the Ghoul to unfold himself gracefully upwards, then reached for his extended hand. She winced at the popping noises from her joints as he pulled her effortlessly upright. Sleeping on the ground was _not _like sleeping on a desk. For one thing, desks and counter tops were notoriously lacking in small rocks. It had been too warm for her blanket again. She dusted herself off as best she could.

_Ugh. I _hate _being dirty. I'd give every cap I've still got for a shower._

"What's our distance from the site?" Xen asked as she buckled her gun belt back on. She had asked more than once yesterday, too.

"If nothing unforeseen occurs, we should reach it within four hours," Changeling said. "Allowing for travel over uneven terrain and the necessity of pathfinding among the trees."

Charon, at this point, was heard to mutter something about _nothing unforseen. _The accent was too heavy for the words to be quite clear, but Xen thought a couple of swear words were included.

"Come on, Charon," Xen said. "Let's get some food and get going. Bell, do you eat?"

"No," said Bell. She stopped pacing, and the taut line of her shoulders relaxed a little. "Are you all right? You made sort of a funny noise a couple of times."

"I get bad dreams," Xen said. "Things out here aren't like things in the – things where I grew up. I'm only just getting used to all the violence."

"I'm having a little trouble with that, too," said Bell dryly.

Xen rinsed her mouth with water as she passed packages to Charon. Then she dug out a hair brush and brushed the dust out of her hair as best she could. It was a little greasy when she tied it back, but she felt better.

"How's your processing?" Xen asked Bell as they started off. "You seem less talkative today."

"I did a lot of reorganization last night. I had to dump some sectors, but I think I'm over the worst part now," Bell said. "The error messages are a lot less frequent." She looked around. "I'm trying to evolve some new subroutines for dealing with live threats."

"I guess that's good," Xen said.

Bell shrugged. "Maybe. I'm still working damage control on the fly here. That means I'm creating programming myself, and I'm not supposed to be able to do that." She smiled tightly. "The techs would have a collective aneurysm if they knew. Ha."

"Wait," Xen said, going back one remark. "You had to dump some sectors? Of _memory?_"

"That's right," Bell said.

Xen tried to picture this. "How do you decide what to give up?"

Bell's smile was small, and tight across her teeth.

"I started with all of my original command overrides," she said. "Including the locational function check that they used to catch me to begin with."

"Which is why none of my bots can do that," Xen said, imagining the havok possible if Changeling were able to simply delete her own overrides. Then, belatedly, "They used a what?"

"Originally it was meant to make us easy to locate if we were buried under debris or hidden in smoke," Bell said. "If someone says our model number and 'location,' we have to say 'here.' Of course, it's also a way of confirming that someone is an android – _if _you know their model number."

"But you still remember that," Xen pointed out.

"Sure I do," Bell said. "It's in positronic memory. It's experiential. I deleted the subprogram-level record that makes it a compulsive response."

"So if you can't delete experiential memories, does that mean you can't actually make yourself forget what happened to you?" Xen asked.

"I wish I could," Bell said. "But no. That takes special tools and it has to be done from outside, by a tech. Not even hard trauma will do it unless it's completely destructive."

"You mean unless it kills you," Xen said.

"You could put it that way," Bell said. "If I were human. But it doesn't really bother you that I'm not, does it?"

"No," Xen said frankly. "I'm only seventy percent myself – which I think you've probably guessed. All my friends have been robots, except for Charon. And he's not like other people. Believe me, I'm glad," she added quickly. "I'd never have survived the last few weeks without him."

_Without him and his two invisible friends, _Xen thought. _But I don't want to have _that _discussion right now._

Conversation faltered after that. It was very dark among the trees, and Xen pulled down her goggles and opened her inner lids fully. This only helped a little. The hills and the enormous thermal mass of trees radiated all around her, masking living things. Charon was occasionally heard to mutter to himself, but Bell was silent now, staring at everything around them as they went. Twigs and needles snapped under Xen's feet, even in her moccasins; Bell was even worse. Charon's leather boots made no noise at all.

It seemed like much more than four hours before Changeling said,

"Geiger counter is registering an increase in background radiation," at almost the same time that Bell said,

"I'm picking up some rads."

"How many clicks?" Xen asked.

"Twenty per minute," Changeling said.

"Stop." The packbot halted obediently as Xen dug through packages for her small supply of Rad-X. She swallowed the large white pill and chased it with a drink of what was, by this time, very warm water.

_That should do for a couple of hours._

"Changeling, note the time at first dosage. Acknowledge," Xen said.

"Acknowledged," Changeling said. "The time is 10:24 p.m."

"Charon, are you still doing all right?"

"Yes," said Charon.

"What about you, Bell?"

The android snorted. "Damn right I am. The only things on me that rads can hurt are inside a half-inch of titanium. And that's under the DCUVRAP." But she was looking quickly from side to side, and her arms were tightly folded against her chest again. Xen didn't even need to hear the obscenity to know she was nervous. There was no knowing what was going on inside the android's positronic brain, so Xen tried not speculate.

"All right," she said. "Changeling, lead us toward the source. It's got to be the from the crash site. Keep your laser charged up and cloak your sensor light." She felt her heart beat faster in a way that had nothing to do with their walking pace.

_This is why I've come. This is why I built Changeling and hired Charon. This is why I've learned to use a deadly weapon and made it through all these weeks of long walks and being filthy and risking my life and theirs. _

_We're almost there._

"Acknowledged," Changeling said, over the rising hum of the laser turret. They had not moved more than a few steps before Charon said,

"There may be danger here."

Xen was not at all surprised when he drew the shotgun from its back holster a minute later. She was watching Bell, to see how she would handle the sudden movement. The android turned her head to watch, but didn't jump or twitch.

"What is it?" Xen whispered.

"Yao guai," Charon said.

He started forward quickly. Xen stared around, but could not find the heat signatures among the thermal mass of trees.

"Charon - "

Charon stopped, without turning to face her. "Please," he said, one syllable with no tone to it at all. "Dis time I can do it. Stay under cover."

"Go," Xen said. She didn't say _come back alive. _He obviously had the incident with the super mutants too much on his mind already.

"What was that about?" Bell whispered. Xen watched Charon's heat signature dwindle among the trees as they flattened themselves under a low bush. Branches scratched at Xen's hair.

"Some super mutants grabbed me a few days ago," Xen replied very quietly. "They very nearly killed us both. I'd guess he's upset that he couldn't prevent that."

"He must like you," Bell said. The tone of her voice, to Xen's surprise, was wistful.

"I'm not sure he knows what that is," Xen said. "He wants badly to keep me alive because I'm his employer. His contract is everything to him." She spoke as quietly as she could and still hear herself; she was straining after the sound of the shotgun firing. There had been nothing yet. She had read a little about yao guai, the barely-recognizable descendants of the Capital Wasteland's black bears. The pictures had mostly been taken from a distance, and with good reason. The mutants were bigger than black bears and built almost like fighting dogs, tense and hard-muscled. And, given what it took to maintain such a frame, they were much more active hunters than black bears as well. There would be no slinking away from strange noises for a hunting pair of yao guai. They would respond to new circumstances with a fierce and predatory curiosity.

_I wonder if they can hear us now. Smell us? I don't remember how they hunt exactly... Which way is the wind blowing? _she asked herself. The air seemed very still. What would they make of a scent like hers, like Bell's? Would she even seem edible?

_Charon will. They won't be bothered that he's irradiated if they live in the middle of this..._

She heard a shot. Another.

"_Take dat, ya bastard!"_ roared a voice from up ahead. Xen smiled, only partly in relief. Bell was staring at her without comprehension. But then, her hearing was probably better than Xen's. She could undoubtedly hear the quieter, moderating voice as well as the loud one.

"Xen," she said urgently. "He's talking to himself in different voices."

"It's all right," Xen said. "He's done it for as long as I've known him. It seems to be a stable arrangement."

"Oh, good," Bell said under her breath. Then, "Is there _anyone _here who's functioning at optimum?"

"Changeling probably is," Xen said.

Bell glanced up through the foliage at the hovering packbot. Whatever remark she had about this was lost to posterity, since at that moment there was an animal snarl from up ahead. There was a sound of something smashing through the brush, and then another pair of shots, one after the other.

Xen watched the familiar tall heat profile materialize from among the trees, coming unerringly back to their position.

"Xen," said Charon's voice. "Clear."

Bell and Xen wormed out from under the bush and stood up. Xen looked at Charon anxiously as she brushed herself off, but there was nothing irregular in his heat profile.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

"I have no injuries," Charon said. "And I believe I have found what you are looking for."

Xen's heart leaped into her throat.

"Lead the way," she said.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Charon paced ahead of them, shouldering aside foliage. Each footfall was solid now, quite audible. Occasionally he held a branch out of the way so that Xen could pass without it hitting her in the face. She could hear Bell right behind her. Changeling seemed to be circling around to their left, trying to avoid low-hanging branches. For her, at least, footing was not an issue.

They passed two dead yao guai, already cooling in the warm night and stinking of blood and musk. Each one had been shot in the face from in front. Twice.

"_Error_," Bell said at the second one. "_Data inconsistency. Please leave the area imm_fuck. Sorry. I have a base predisposition to consider dead organisms in a high-radiation environment as an indicator for evacuation. Just ignore it. I'm editing the damn protocol now."

"It's not a problem," Xen said. "Charon wouldn't be making so much noise if there was anything dangerous nearby. He can tell things like that."

"Really? How the Hell does he do that?" Bell asked.

"I don't know," Xen said. Glancing back, she saw the light blinking behind Bell's left iris again. It made a small, cold pinpoint in the dark, light without heat. "But if I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with the fact that situational hyper-awareness isn't uncommon in very traumatized humans. Does that reflect your experience, Charon?"

"Yes," Charon said. He had no temperature response to the question. But then, he didn't really seem bothered by being asked personal questions. There was, after all, no privacy clause in his contract.

"And 'traumatic' is a good description of Charon's life to date," Xen went on. "And he's been doing what he does for more than thirty years, and he's still alive. So whatever it is, it works for him."

"Thirty years," Bell said, and Xen felt rather than saw her shiver. "I can't imagine this going on for that long. I think I'd start erasing core data long before that."

"That is not dissimilar to certain organic coping mechanisms," said Changeling's voice from off to the left. "Although memory leak leading to overfocus on the traumatic record is far more common."

"She means those nightmares you have, right?" Bell said.

"Right," Xen said. "Oh. My..."

Charon had stopped at the lip of a large depression in the ground. There were no trees in the hollow, though bushes and grass grew up here and there. The waxing moon shone brightly down on the elegant curve of a corroded gray hull. The roughly saucer-shaped craft lay tilted against the other side of the depression. Two small wings protruded forward on either side of the shattered cabin. The cockpit was a round bubble of starred and shattered transparent material that surely was only superficially like glass. Earth had mounded up around it with the impact, though it had now been long enough that there were plants growing up out of it.

There were no plants growing on the empty space suit that lay nearby. In fact, the ground around it was bare stone for several inches, which was why the silvery material was so easy to spot. There was still a dark smear on the cracked material of the bubble helmet. They might have been in a hurry, but the Doctors had not been destructive. Though the suit lay flat and empty, they had clearly sealed it again after extracting its precious contents. It had red boots. Xen wasn't sure why.

She started slowly down the steep side of the hollow, watching her footing. There was plenty of time, she told herself, wiping her sweaty hands on her pants.

_Don't get overeager and damage the data._

"Everyone be careful," she said. "I'm after information here. I don't want anything destroyed."

"I am receiving a radio transmission," Changeling said. The packbot glided easily down into the depression. "Probable origin is inside the craft."

"Really?" Xen said. "I wonder what its power source is." That wasn't so very unusual in itself. There were prewar technologies from _this _planet that still worked fine after two _hundred _years; twenty or thirty was nothing. "Can you replay it?"

"Affirmative," Changeling said. "But I doubt it will be informative." There was a brief sputter, and then a burst of speech. The voice was slow, measured, and completely incomprehensible. Xen listened to the message run through once, then repeat itself. She had hoped she might somehow grasp some part of the xenolanguage if she heard it. Perhaps there would be some part of her brain that belonged completely to her third contributor, some alien organ that contained racial learning or memory. It didn't happen. The words remained unknowable.

"All right," she said finally. "You have a recording?"

"Affirmative," Changeling said.

"Good. Find a place to drop your cargo. Write your sensory data to permanent memory from this point until we leave the area. Even with your oversized AI in there, you should have room."

"Acknowledged. Recording continues." Changeling moved to a relatively clear space that was still several yards from the containment suit. She lowered her three arms and let go of the edges of the cargo net. It dropped onto the grass with a thump and a rustle.

"I'm going to need some apparati." Xen went to the resulting pile to dig out a couple of her smaller tools and the precious padded box of sample jars. "Bell, will you be all right here for a while? I have a lot to do."

"I'm okay," Bell said. She was still looking around. "I've got some reprocessing to do again anyway. I can see hanging around you is going to require a lot of rebuilds."

"I've had to do a few myself," Xen said absently, and went to walk around the ship with Changeling close behind. The hull had surprisingly few markings, no trace of writing or anything that might mark the craft individually.

_But this is a reconnaissance vehicle, _Xen thought. _It was probably built with anonymity in mind. Especially if they didn't want Earth to know they were watching. I wonder what kind of shielding it has. _

"Changeling," Xen said. "Assess. Where are the rads are coming from?"

"Best hypothesis is that a propulsive mechanism was damaged by the crash," said Changeling. "It would have to be very stable to continue leaking consistently for twenty years without total loss of containment. The Doctors' records indicate the leak was present at the time they arrived."

"I know. I've read them. I admit, I'm a little surprised the craft is still here."

"It is a reasonable conclusion from the available data," Changeling said. "The vehicle is large and heavy, it is partly concealed by the terrain, and the return of foliage after Project Purity has undoubtedly served to conceal its position further. Human xenophobia would also discourage potential looters where the radiation would provide only a temporary deterrent."

"I'm sure," Xen said. "Ah hah. The source of our radiation leak." A panel was missing from the back of the craft, and a long skein of tangled wire dangled down to the ground. With her inner lids open and her goggles off, the purple bloom of gamma was quite obvious, though it diffused into the general tint of her surroundings within a few feet.

"Geiger count is consistent with that view," Changeling said. "If you remain in proximity you will need to take another Rad-X in 30 minutes."

"Acknowledged," Xen said. "Let's see what we can see." She knelt to peer inside the cavity. It presented, as expected, a mass of semi-corroded wires and tubes. Some of the tubes were transparent, still carrying dark-colored liquids (Coolants? Lubricants?) around the inside of the ship.

_If it's anything obvious, it will be near the outside, _Xen thought. _Something that took a hit when the ship crashed._

The glow of gamma was broad and diffuse inside the compartment. Given how long the leak had continued, this was not surprising. Xen squinted, looking for any suspicious brighter spot. She found it behind another tangle of wires as she moved them aside with a probe. The tube actually glowed faintly even in the ordinary visual spectrum, a pale green. A thin drip of liquid fell out of it and splattered on the wires below as Xen watched.

"Glue dot," Xen said, holding out the probe. Changeling applied a small blob of adhesive to the end. Xen dabbed it over the leak until the dripping ceased. "Well, that's stopped the leak. Query: Can we decontaminate?" she asked.

"Negative. Not with available resources. Irradiation of the surrounding area will fade within ten to twenty years."

"That doesn't help us," Xen said. "But I'm glad, anyway. I might be able to come back with heavier equipment some day. I'd just as soon nobody found the site before then. Here, you should at least be able to decon the probe with your laser."

"Affirmative." Changeling saw to this as Xen walked back around the hull to see what the others were doing. Charon stood at the lip of the hollow. As Xen watched, his head tracked slowly from side to side, surveying the surrounding area. The shotgun was still on his back. Bell squatted near him on the rim, lips moving without sound. Neither seemed disturbed by the proximity. They seemed to be operating under a silent agreement that each would ignore the other.

"I stopped the rad leak," Xen said. "Changeling says the contamination will take years to fade, though."

"_Please evacuate -_" Bell refocused abruptly on Xen. "Sorry. I thought I got that one. What are you going to do now?"

Xen shrugged. "Look at everything. Have Changeling make recordings. I'd like to haul that suit home, but if it was too heavy for the Doctors – for the last people here – it'll probably be too heavy for me, too. Anyway, I'm going to try and get samples of the materials. From the cockpit, too, if I can."

"What about the mechanisms?" Bell said. She straightened up slowly, looking down at the ship. "Do you think it has any systems active still?"

"It looks bad," Xen said. She turned to survey the torn and rusted state of the cockpit's interior. "But I'll have to check. Computer records from this thing would be worth more than caps. Even if I get nothing but pics of a screen scrolling. I'm sure there's nothing there Changeling can interface with. I couldn't take the risk of damage to her AI, even if there was."

"I remind you that in the event of severe damage to my artificial intelligence, I have been instructed to dump all records to a secured internal device," Changeling said from behind her. "It will eject with my medical supplies if the emergency button is triggered. But I agree that avoidance of damage would be a preferable solution in terms of transportation and convenience."

"More than slightly," Xen said. "I suppose you have no emotional reaction to the fact that you'd be dead if that happened."

"I do not," Changeling said. "And in any case, death is an insufficiently applicable term to an artificial intelligence."

"You mean Tori will still be functional," Xen said. She added to Bell, who was watching with apparent curiosity, "Tori is the robot who copied herself into the packbot's chassis. Originally, it was meant to be a much more primitive AI. I made my other bots stay behind when I left. Tori found a way to come along. She's not prissy, like the copy is, but she's always been a stubborn bot." Xen smiled sadly. "I guess that's where I got it from. My reading says those things are more learned than innate."

"I guess they are, in organic people," Bell said. "I envy that a little bit." She walked slowly down into the hollow, keeping her balance easily even on the steep slope. "You change yourself all the time, sometimes without even knowing it – just like walking and breathing. I have to do it on purpose, step by step." She illustrated with a firm step forward into the grass.

"But sometimes things change when we don't want them to," Xen said. "And I don't have your degree of control over _my _error processing. I wish I did."

"The time is 11:20 p.m.," Changeling said. "Another Rad-X is recommended."

"Oh. Right." Xen went to swallow another pill. Bell watched her. Xen almost choked when she said,

"So you're doing this because you're part alien, right?"


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Xen swallowed hastily.

"It's fairly obvious, isn't it?" she said. "This is why I've been avoiding other people. It doesn't bother Charon."

"But if you're seventy/thirty, you've got to be a made, not a born," said Bell. "You said you were seventy percent human."

"By codon count," Xen said. "I'm Human/Xenoorganic Hybrid #19." She waved ironically. "Pleased to meet you, B2-09." Bell made a _tfff _sound that was not quite a laugh, but she was smiling just a little. "I was grown in an artificial womb they built just for me. Then one of them killed the other one, and Tori killed _her, _and I ended up being raised by her and Bunni. Bunni's a Robobrain."

"And now you want to find out more about your other people," Bell said. "I can understand that. I went to see the bay where they built me once." The android ran a hand through her short, stiff hair. "It was boring, and kind of creepy. There were parts of other androids all over the place."

"Well, at least I don't have that problem," Xen said. She tried not to picture a repair bay full of parts of skinny greenish-white hybrids. "Even my third contributor's body isn't here now. It's been in a tank in the Lab for my entire life. Still there, I hope." She took her box of sample jars over to the space suit and began looking for its seals. They were disappointingly prosaic. But then, they had to be operable by someone with no thumbs, didn't they? Xen had been hoping for some suggestion of telekinesis or other interesting abilities.

_But then, wanting to be special is a universal human desire, isn't it? I'd like being me to have some advantages other than seeing in the dark. It's not like there isn't a big enough downside to that._

She peered inside the suit. It was lined with silvery fabric. No surprise there; it would have to have some sort of temperature regulation inside as well as ventilation. There was an odd lump in the upper middle of the suit, around where the chest area should be. Xen reached out with a probe and prodded it gently.

There was a rising hum, a brilliant flash, and a spike of blinding pain.

Xen opened her eyes to find herself lying on her back. The faces of Charon and Bell hovered above her. Nothing hurt, but for some reason, she couldn't seem to move her arms or legs.

Later she realized that she had looked at Charon before anything else, instinctively and without thought, even though she could only move her eyes. It was still dark. His heat signature was solid, familiar, and not a single degree warmer than normal. The pattern of skin and flesh on his face had not changed since she last saw it.

_I'm going to be all right._

"Tha' hurt," Xen said. "Wha' happen?" Her tongue was being uncooperative as well.

"You shot yourself," said Charon. "Wit' dis." He held up a small hand weapon with an elliptical barrel and a crosswise space for a power cell at the top, which was currently empty. "It appears to have been left underneath t'suit." His voice had no more tonal quality than usual, and his face certainly showed no expression, but Xen received an odd impression – fleeting, almost subliminal – of humor.

"And you hit the trigger," said Bell. "Good thing the power cell in it was low. Otherwise you could've killed yourself. Charon took the power cell out so you could look at it later."

"As per previous instructions regarding use of initiative, I searched t'site for any other such items," Charon said. "I found several power cells, but no additional weapons."

"Can' move," Xen said, addressing a more pressing concern.

"The weapon discharges electrical energy," said Changeling's voice from out of her view. "You absorbed considerable voltage from its nimbus, although fortunately the suit's insulation diverted most of the blast. You will be able to move again shortly, when your nervous system has had time to rebalance the ions in your muscle cells. I judged that stim was not indicated."

"No contact burn?" Xen asked, working hard at enunciating.

"None," said Changeling. "Your skin is thinner than human skin and thus offers very little resistance. Fortunately, the overall charge absorption was also insufficient to cause burns to your internal organs." Xen managed to flop her head over sideways, so that she could see the packbot hovering nearby.

"Oh," she said. "Good." A moment's experiment revealed that it was already possible to move her fingers and toes.

"I strongly suggest we move away from the site for the day," Changeling said. "A literal shock to your system will likely increase the probability of anaphylaxis, and this is your first experience in an environment with plentiful vegetation."

"Acknowledged," Xen said. Speaking normally was becoming easier. "Charon, find a secure camp site outside the irradiated zone."

"I will obey," said Charon, and disappeared from her view. The sound of booted footsteps retreated rapidly.

"You're taking this pretty damn well, for a near-death experience," said Bell. Xen waited another moment or so before she tried to sit up. She managed to lurch into a sitting position. This gave her a much better view of Bell, who was currently squatting next to her with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped.

"Ha," Xen said. "This wasn't even close. If the suit hadn't been there, I'd have seen the gun. And with the suit on top of it, there was no way it could be propped straight up. And unless it was propped straight up, there's no way it could've fired off enough charge to kill me." She waved an arm experimentally. It flopped like a dead fish. She decided to wait another minute or so before getting up. "Now, another allergy attack – that would be something to worry about. That's why Changeling carries epinephrine. Or a seizure, which is what happens if I look at the sun with my inner eyelids open and goggles off."

"How did you find that out?" Bell asked.

"Long story. The short version is that I had a nervous breakdown and did something stupid. Did Charon collect up the power cells he found?"

"Yes," said Bell. "He's still got the blaster, too. I guess it must've belonged to the alien."

Xen lifted her head abruptly. "That's right! I'll have to see if I can hold it. I have a hard time with regular triggers, you know. I can't draw or fire this .22 very fast." She shifted position, aware suddenly that the holster was digging into her hip. She thought about asking Bell to help her up, but stopped herself just in time.

_She said she goes suboptimal whenever she thinks about touching something alive. And it'll probably be very hard for her to refuse a direct request. It's not fair to do that to her._

"So why do you carry it?" Bell asked. "Especially when you've got a bodyguard already. You don't seem very aggressive."

"Backup," Xen said succinctly. "Anything that gets through Charon _and _Changeling will be in bad shape. Maybe even bad enough shape that I can shoot it before it gets me. I haven't got much chance at defending myself otherwise. And that's on a _good _day." Xen tested her leg muscles and found them responsive. She scrambled upright, swaying slightly.

"Charon's not here now," Bell pointed out. She straightened up easily. "How do you know I haven't been acting all this time, just waiting for a chance to get you alone?" As usual, her posture was closed, revealing nothing. Very much nothing, in the android's case, because there was no reason to suppose any aggressive behavior would be preceded by aggressive body language.

_But that's just a given, _Xen thought. What she said was:

"Because Charon _did _leave you here. Not only that, he left you here when I couldn't move. And even Changeling, the most suspicious AI I've ever met, doesn't do threat assessment as well as Charon does. Besides, I saw what happened to you."

"And you stopped it," Bell said. "I won't forget that." She looked up at the cloudy night sky. "Well, not unless they make me."

"No one will make you do anything," Xen said very firmly.

Bell just shook her head.

"You'll see," Xen said. "You're tough and you're smart. All the things they can do to get to you have to do with programming, don't they? And you can change that now. You could be invincible." She was conscious that she sounded a little wistful herself. "So you're afraid the A3 units are faster than you are. So what? Hide behind something bulletproof until they have to come after you up close. If you're strong enough to break a steel collar with your fingers, all you have to do is get your hands around one's neck."

"They don't actually have to breathe," Bell pointed out, but she was looking thoughtful now. "I mean, all their organic components depend on skin respiration. They just do it so they'll look more human."

Xen shrugged. "So how do you kill one? Assess. Um. I mean, think about it." Her legs held her fairly well now. She flexed her knees experimentally.

"I will,"said Bell. "Looks like Charon is coming back."

Xen turned to see the Ghoul appear between the trees, jogging with mechanical precision. He descended the slope without much pause.

"Did you find a camp site?" Xen asked.

"Yes," said Charon. "I will suggest dat you permit me to carry you dere."

"Is that really necessary?" Xen asked.

"Affirmative," said Changeling. "Local terrain is uneven, and you may have minor muscular spasms for the next several hours. This indicates a high probability of minor injuries that will contribute to risk of radiation injury or infection."

"All right," Xen said. "Just let me put away the..." She looked around for her sample jars.

"I have already stored the equipment," Changeling said, and went to pick up the cargo net.

"I guess I don't have to tell you to be careful," Xen said to Charon.

"You do not," Charon said, and picked her up and laid her over his left shoulder. Xen, with her elbows on Charon's lower shoulderblades, had an excellent view of Bell grinning. She wondered if she was blushing gray.

"Is this how you carried me before?" she asked. "I seem to recall I was unconscious both times."

"Dat is correct," Charon said. "Dis leaves my right hand free. Will dis be unacceptable?"

"No, definitely not," Xen said. "I won't tell you how to do your job."

Charon remained diplomatically silent as he walked up the slope. Xen's weight didn't seem to inconvenience him very much. Beside them, Bell and Changeling negotiated the incline without apparent difficulty.

"I want that gun when we get where we're going, though," Xen said. "I want to examine it. And the rounds. It's the only working xenotech we've found."

"So you don't think anything on the ship will work?" Bell asked.

"Well, something obviously does, or it wouldn't still be transmitting on the radio," Xen said. "And there was coolant actively flowing in some of the tubes in back. I'm just not sure I'll be able to get anything decipherable out of it."

"There was something that looked kind of like a computer terminal in the cockpit, but it was pretty trashed," Bell said. "I don't think it'll show anything."

"Oh." Xen sighed. Her left ankle twitched involuntarily. "Well, I guess that's not surprising. Anyway, I'll look over it tomorrow and see if I can find any clues to the interface. At least if there was a computer screen, we know they're not using direct neural implants or anything like that. There was nothing on my third contributor's body to suggest that, anyway."

"Oh, neural implants have some problems," Bell said. "Especially if they're wired to wetware. It's why the old USA used sensory suits instead."

Xen looked at her in surprise, to the extent that this was possible at her current angle. "You mean they do that in the Commonwealth?"

"Well, at the Institute," Bell said. "You want to talk about people who have it worse than androids." Xen saw her shiver. "They can't get very far from the life support. Neural implants allow a lot more interaction with a computer or a VR environment, but they also tend to reroute biological systems to conscious control. So you can either spend all your time telling yourself to breathe, or you can let the machines do it for you so you can do the work you got the implants for to begin with. When I ran away, they were working on developing specialized brain cell growth to allow for retaining more autonomic functions."

"That sounds like something that might be kept secret," Xen said.

"It damn well was," Bell said. "Still is. And I know a lot of things like that. All of us do."

"Oh." Xen felt inclined to shiver herself.

_So there is very good reason to believe they'll want her back, beyond just the cost of replacement, _Xen thought_. I'm starting to see why she's so sure they'll send an android after her next time. I wouldn't mind having her around the Lab myself._

Now, there was an interesting thought. Although, if she ever did make it home, it was going to be crowded with Bunni, Tori, Charon, and Xen already. She would have to think about finding some bigger quarters. The Doctors had done it, hadn't they? And she had everything they had brought with them, except for the Vertibird. And, unlike the Doctors, she had Charon -

- Who was currently setting her on her feet in a small clearing. There was a small pond, hardly more than a puddle, off to one side. Well, she'd be able to wash, even if it was cold. That was one comfort.

"Thank you, Charon," Xen said. "Now let's see the gun."


	27. Chapter 27

_A/N: A couple of the alien blaster's features are, of course, totally made up by me. There had to be some explanation for how it could be used by the player character, whose hands are so different from the dead alien's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that a race that had achieved space travel would create these high-tech rounds only to have them last hardly any time at all (the way they do in the game). I'm taking a similar attitude toward the weapon's canonical lack of durability._

Chapter 27

It wasn't a large weapon. Smaller, probably, than the .22. Xen looked at it carefully as Charon held it out, lying across his large palm but still pointed, she observed, carefully away from her. The barrel was a pointed ellipse, like one of the old zeppelins she had seen pictures of, and the cell cradle across the top looked a little awkward there. The grip and trigger were, indeed, shaped somewhat differently than the other weapons she had seen.

Xen picked it up gingerly.

"It weighs hardly anything," she said. She snorted. "Even to me. I guess that makes sense. My third contributor is very small, and I'm fairly sure he was an adult."

Her fingers were just about long enough that she could wrap them all the way around the handle, so that her fingertips came back to her palm. The shape of the grip accommodated this perfectly. Two fingers about the grip, one to the trigger – yes, that worked. She wasn't quite sure what to do with her thumb. She laid it against the back of the handle, hoping the weapon wouldn't have much recoil. There was no hammer to cock back, and no safety catch that she could find.

As her first finger touched the trigger, the grip changed suddenly. Xen's hand twitched.

_Good thing there's no power cell in it, or I'd have just shot myself in the foot._

The material felt suddenly warm under her hand. Now there was a perfect resting place for her thumb. And something in its visible spectrum had changed, just a little. She wasn't quite sure how. It didn't seem to be radiating above normal background, which was odd considering that they had found it in an irradiated area.

"It's conforming to my hand," she said. "With no power cell in it. I wonder how that works. Did it do that when you picked it up, Charon?"

"It did not," said Charon.

"I think it must be triggered chemically," Xen said thoughtfully. "Do Ghouls sweat?" Charon was wearing a glove on his right hand, but it was fingerless, presumably to allow for more sensitivity when handling weapons.

"I don't," Charon said.

"So your dermal chemistry is probably pretty far off an ordinary human's," Xen said.

"That agrees with my files," said Changeling. "Although there is considerable variation among individual Ghouls."

"Same as everybody. How many power cells do we have for this, Charon?"

"Six and one empty," said Charon.

"I strongly advise against attempting to fire the weapon at this time," Changeling said immediately.

Xen laughed. "You really don't think much of my judgment, do you? No, don't answer that. I'm not going to try and shoot it now." She carried the gun over to the packbot's cargo net and reluctantly placed it inside a rucksack. It felt surprisingly natural in her hand, unlike any human-made tool she'd ever handled. "Give me the cells, Charon."

He handed over seven little cylinders. Each had a small metal cap on the end and was made of something that looked like glass. Six contained something blue that glowed faintly. The seventh seemed clear and empty, without even a residue left inside.

"Hm," Xen said. She tilted a full cell back and forth. There was no air bubble inside. Nothing sloshed. "Changeling, have you done any spectroscopy on these?"

"Affirmative," said Changeling. "But I was unable to identify the contents. It is not an acid/metal battery of any kind, since the interior is not compartmentalized. I am unable to get a read on any individual compound. I suspect the molecular contents may be sufficiently energetic that my sensor cannot isolate them."

"I guess that's not surprising," Xen said. "Whatever it is, it's well-contained. They're cold. Which strikes me as a very, very good reason _not _to try and open one up." She tucked the cells into an inside compartment, separate from the gun, and turned back to the others. The night was wearing on. Far overhead, a cloud had mostly blotted out the stars.

"Glad to hear it," said Bell, who had been silent for some time. She stood in what was becoming a typical posture for her, straight-backed with her arms folded. It made her seem taller than she was, even with her stocky frame. "I'd be happy to never see another fucking chemical spill."

"How are you doing now?" Xen asked at once.

"I'm... working on it." Bell's voice never seemed very expressive. Xen guessed her makers had chosen not to spend much time on voice modulation for a laboratory assistant.

_Or, more likely, she's just feeling too many things that the modulator's software can't translate into human emotion. _Xen found herself inclining more toward this theory. The very concept of dual experience – of positronic versus other, basal memories, some of them changeable, some not – was strange and frightening to contemplate for an organic person. The fact that Bell didn't come across as raving insane therefore meant her perceptions were very different from Xen's.

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" she asked. "Is it better or worse if I talk to you now?"

"I don't know," Bell said. "I'm not sure how I should relate to you. I'm trying to build a new socialization category because my others have gone to shit." She ran her hands through her short hair again, a familiar gesture of tense frustration. "You're not an android or a robot. I can fit your friends into those categories even if they're not technically true in Charon's case, because that's how he responds to you." Which, Xen thought with some interest, explained why the android seemed so comfortable with the Ghoul even after the violence she'd seen him carry out.

"Sometimes you talk like the techs and the supervisors, but I fucking hated them, and I don't hate you," Bell went on. "I don't want you to die from electric shock or anaphylaxis or seizures or whatever -"

"Maybe I shouldn't have told you about those," Xen said.

"- You talk to me like I'm another person. That's not something I'm used to."

"Well, you are another person," Xen said reasonably. "As much as I am, anyway. Just made from different materials."

"Dat may be a dangerous assumption to make," Charon said. He was looking at Bell, not at her.

Xen looked at him in surprise. "What?"

"You also suffer from a shortage of interaction categories," Changeling said from beside her. "Specifically, you tend to assume that everyone you meet is, to a greater or lesser extent, a robot."

"Actually, I think that's true," Bell said. She was looking marginally less tense. "You do that."

"That's not an unreasonable conclusion on my part, if we're talking about empirical experience," Xen pointed out. "Almost everybody I've met so far that hasn't directly wanted me dead _has _been a robot, to a greater or lesser extent. Charon, you're in sort of a class by yourself because you're an organic with a set of rules that resemble programming, but I'm still working at just letting you be you."

"That's actually pretty safe," Bell said. "Because Charon doesn't have the problem I have."

"What problem?" Xen asked.

"I have a self-determinative malfunction, remember?" Bell said. "I don't have the framework that used to keep me from having to make decisions for myself. And now I can't be sure I'll make the right decisions."

"But Charon does make decisions," Xen said. "He just does it within... specific... limits..." She looked at the Ghoul uncomfortably. He looked back without expression. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"Dere is no reason for dat," Charon said. "I am what I am. Dere is not'ing else."

"But I don't know what I am any more," Bell said. "You see? And I don't know how to find out. That's not a problem any robot has to deal with. It's an android problem."

Xen walked slowly across the clearing until she was looking up at Bell from a foot or so away.

"Bell, that's a human problem, too," she said. "Or at least it's a hybrid's problem. Why do you think I came all the way out here, built Changeling and hired Charon and all the rest of it? It wasn't for my health, I can tell you that. I've been self-determinative for seventeen years, and I still don't know what I am." Xen shrugged. "Maybe I never will. Maybe there's no category for you or me." It was hard to say, but she couldn't have said it at all four months previously.

"I hope you're wrong," Bell said, looking down at her. Her face was not expressive, but the lines it was set in said _pain_. "I'm not sure I can operate with no parameters."

"I don't operate with _no _parameters," Xen said. "And that's just ignoring the obvious physical ones. I try to be fair to people who take orders from me. I'm learning not to put them in danger for no reason. I don't kill anything or – and this is important – let Charon kill anything if it isn't absolutely necessary. And I learn. Everything I can, from anybody I can get it from. That's important to me. You just have to decide what_'s _important to _you_. What do you want?"

"I want to stay alive," Bell said slowly. "I want never to go back to the Institute. I don't want to be owned by anyone." The light behind her eye flicked off and on again, just once. "And I don't want to be alone."

"There are a lot of complicated things happening inside you, I can tell," Xen said. "But the things you just said? Those are simple. _Primary directive_ simple. If you use those as a basis, you can probably work in the socialization around them. Most humans do, and they're operating with a lot less conscious control than you have. If you don't have autonomic systems, then you've got to have more processing power than a human brain, because you're not just standing in one place telling yourself to keep running – like those neural implant people you told us about."

"All you've seen me do so far is walk and talk," Bell said. She folded her arms again, but the way she shifted her weight to one foot suggested less tension. "I froze up when you got shot, you know. I probably will next time something serious happens, too."

"That probably won't hurt us," Xen said. She thought she did a fairly good job, for someone who wasn't used to lying. "Charon and Changeling can deal with most things. And if they can't, there's probably not much you could do anyway."

Bell's smile said she wasn't fooled. "You're an odd little person," Bell said. "But I think I like you."

"I like you, too," Xen said, and realized this was the truth. "I guess I might as well try and get a couple of hours' sleep. I _am _tired."

"Not an uncommon side effect of electric shock," Changeling said. Xen went to dig out the olive drab blanket, which by this time was showing definite signs of wear.

"Charon, you should probably eat something," Xen said. And with that, she staggered over to the largest tree she could find and did her best to make herself comfortable among the roots. The earthy smell was odd, after so many years lived among stone and concrete, but it was not unpleasant. She fell asleep surprisingly quickly.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Xen got up feeling somewhat better the next night, but the crash site produced no new information. It was evident from visible clues that the xenoorganic race were bipeds with three digits, saw things in a different visual range than humans, and were physically small.

_All of which I've known since I was two, _Xen thought in some frustration. There was no possibility of getting anything from the machine's computer. The inputs were half-destroyed, and the monitor's glass analogue completely shattered. She found something that seemed to be an audio pickup, but it wouldn't respond to her voice. Very likely it was keyed to the voiceprint of the craft's long-dead operator. And, though both tried, neither Changeling nor Bell had a good enough voice modulator to accurately mimic the voice from the radio transmission.

"With ten years, a fully stocked laboratory, and several more people, I might be able to learn something," she said to the others at nearly dawn, after the night's work was done. Even the boots from the containment suit didn't fit her. Her feet were apparently shorter and wider than her third contributor's. "I'm wasting my time." She poked disconsolately at her Blamco Mac 'N Cheese with a plastic fork as she sat on a tree root. "There's no clue to where he came from, or why he was here, or if anyone will come back for him. There could be another ship in geosynchronous orbit watching everything we're doing here, and I'd never know."

"The more reason not to remain," Changeling said. "It has been a long journey. We should return to the Lab."

"I'm not ready to go back yet," Xen said. "I'm not going to say the trip has been a waste so far, but I think there's more to learn yet before I go back to living underground." She thought for a while as she ate. Eventually she said, "Changeling. You've been recording whenever we're down at the craft, right?"

"As per your instructions," said Changeling.

"So you've got a fairly good print for its energy signature. Right?"

"Affirmative," said the packbot.

"Is there anything in common between it and the ammunition for the blaster?" She realized she had not used the word before, but it seemed right. To call the alien weapon a _gun _seemed somehow inadequate.

"There is a signature in common, but it is very faint in the case of the canisters. The craft's signature is almost certainly a result of a failure in one or more internal containment fields."

"So there's no possibility you could pick it up at any distance," Xen said. She wasn't really disappointed. It had seemed an unlikely chance to begin with.

"Negative," said Changeling. "The largest radius of detection would be ten miles. And that would require a large source."

"What's the maximum on something like the canisters?" Xen asked.

"I would approximate three hundred yards, assuming they were not inside an insulated container."

"And that's better than I could do," Bell said. "I've got some sensor suites she doesn't have, and I can pick up a live human body or a radiation leak through three concrete walls, but not if it's more than two hundred yards away." She shrugged, almost apologetically. "I was built for laboratory use."

"Don't worry about it," Xen said, surprised and touched by the assumption implicit in this. "Let's think about it logically. Right after the ship crashed, if there were people anywhere nearby, they would probably wander over to look at it. I didn't get my curiosity from my alien thirty percent."

"Right," said Bell. Charon nodded, although a less curious person could hardly be imagined by the inquisitive Xen.

"And, the world being like it is, they'd probably see if there was anything they could use or sell," Xen said. "I'm not surprised they left the containment suit alone, since there was a dead alien inside it at the time. And if the gun was under the body, they might have missed that, too. Charon, the ammunition you found – was it out in the open?"

"No," said Charon. "Most of it was under one edge of t'craft, near t'cockpit."

"If I were doing reconnaissance of an alien world full of people bigger than me, and only bringing one weapon, I'd have more than seven rounds for it," Xen said. "I'll bet if we find the nearest people, we'll find the rest of the ammunition."

"But why do you want more ammunition?" Bell asked. "If you found a hundred of them, they'd still run out too fast."

"I like the blaster," Xen said. "It fits my hand. You know what the odds are that I'll ever find a human weapon I can fire comfortably?"

"Slim and none?" Bell said.

"Exactly," said Xen, although she'd never heard the phrase before. "I want to keep it. If I can, I want to build another one like it. That means I'll have to either learn to make the rounds, or figure out how to modify it to use conventional ones. For that, I need more canisters to study back at the Lab. If I get enough that I can afford to fire off one or two in the cause of staying alive, that would be even better."

"Dere is a house visible from t'crash site," Charon said. "Damage to t'roof suggests the craft probably impacted dere on its way past."

"So we'll check there first," Xen said. She had never noticed the distant house, and Changeling had been down in the pit with her, making recordings. It was a good thing she'd had that pair of tireless eyes up on the rim, scanning everything with a very mechanical persistence. "First thing tomorrow night."

And so they did. Xen took one last look at the downed recon craft on their way past it, though she had to spend another of her small supply of Rad-X to do so. The night was cloudless, the stars winking cold and distant overhead. Was there someone watching from above and far away, Xen wondered? Had they left her alone because they could tell she was a hybrid, neither fully human nor fully theirs? The fact that they hadn't picked her up to dissect or annihilate seemed to speak well for their racial toleration, if that was the case. Or maybe they held their own genes sacred enough that even her seventy percent humanity was not enough reason to destroy her. Perhaps to them she would be loathsome, but morally indestructible.

_That wouldn't surprise me_, Xen thought. Perhaps she had begun to osmose some of Changeling's Tori-like qualities, sucking up cynicism through her pores. Or maybe it was Bell. She would never forget the sound the android had made when her collar came off for the first time.

_And now I've got four days of gang rape to process, and why the fuck did they do that? _Bell had demanded, hysterical and indignant and unable to understand.

_The more I learn about people, the less I like them, _Xen thought. _The very fact that they made Bell like she is – that's damning. The fact that the Doctors made _me _like _I _am, just as much so. I'm not liking me so well lately, either. I only know one human, and sometimes I think the only reason I even trust Charon is because I control him._

But, she thought as she turned to follow Changeling down the hill toward the distant house, that ugly little thought was neither fair nor true. She trusted Changeling less than she did the big Ghoul, though one was her possession and the other, her employee. Perhaps it was because she didn't like Changeling. She knew she could cause the robot harm with just a few words. Every time the bot annoyed her, she was tempted to do it, and she hated herself for that. Her relationship to Charon, on the other hand, was bounded by the rules of the contract. Those rules applied to her as much as to him. _Physical violence on your part will invalidate our contract _was one of the first things he'd ever said to her.

_So part of the reason I don't like Changeling is because she reminds me that I'm not any better than anybody else, _Xen thought_. My motives aren't any purer. And the fact that she does it in the course of trying to keep me alive in the only way she knows how – that just makes it worse. Charon was right about my ego._

But then, Changeling was incapable of caring personally about Xen. She would follow her primary directives right up until the instant her chassis was destroyed or her processor damaged beyond repair. Without her personality files, Tori would be the same way. Xen had always been able to ignore that inconvenient fact because of those same files. Changeling could never ruffle the hair of a worried child, as Tori had once done.

Whereas Charon had his contract. Always that. But there was something beyond that, Xen was willing to swear. Maybe it was only because she reminded him of someone from a long time ago, to whom something very bad had happened. But even if it was only that, it was _personal. _It was something particular to her and to Charon, not to the contract. Not to the rules.

_Not to the programming._

Maybe that was the closest to personal affection she would ever be able to receive. For some reason, that thought did not depress her particularly. But then, Xen's entire short life to date was borrowed time. If there really was any such thing as fate – and Xen was very wary of any concept so supernatural - she had been _meant _to die when she was four years old. Every impact she made on the world, however small, was a victory.

And now they were almost to the house. Xen looked doubtfully at the ramshackle wooden structure. It had been one story and an attic, before the ship had crashed through the roof and destroyed most of it. If anybody had survived that, would they really have come back here? Well, perhaps. Somebody had taken the time to _build _the house, after all, and that was a lot of work to just give up.

"I don't see any heat signatures," Xen said. The thermal mass of the structure wasn't enough to hide them, not with boards sticking up at random from the foundation among the patches of intact wall.

"Negative for movement," said Changeling. Bell nodded her agreement. And Charon, most tellingly, had no weapon drawn and was looking around in an entirely disinterested way.

"I guess we probably won't find anything," Xen said, but started forward anyway.

"Some of the debris may be unstable," Changeling said. "I suggest you send Charon instead."

Xen stopped.

"Let me," said Bell. "_I'm _not going to worry about splinters, and you might want Charon out here with the big gun."

"Are you sure?" Xen asked, turning to look up at the android.

"First concrete decision I've made since the collar came off," Bell said. "Let me do this for you." The statement was notable for its lack of obscenity, and the light in Bell's left eye was bright and unblinking.

"All right," Xen said. "Thank you, Bell."

"I haven't found anything yet," said the android, and went forward with short, solid steps. She was behind a piece of the house's front wall in the next moment, but Xen watched her heat signature moving purposefully about. It was only a little off what was normal for a human, a difference you would have to be looking for. And even then, you'd have to be someone who was used to seeing in the infrared, Xen thought dryly. You'd have to be able to say:

_Orange is more common than red. Bell has too much red, just a degree or so low, and it's too neatly distributed. She should have a white spot around her brain and there isn't much of one, probably because whatever she has there doesn't generate the same heat as an organ. _And, since the first time her collar came off, Xen had never seen a change in Bell's temperature. _She should be heating up a little with muscle exertion, and she's not. I guess whatever she has for servos doesn't generate much heat, either, or else it's insulated by the DCUVRAP._

Heat signature or no, Bell's choice of search methods was very inhuman. She started at the front of the structure and went straight back and forth, making sure she didn't miss anything. Xen was quite sure that she personally would have gone straight to any interesting object, say a cupboard or a chair, and searched there first. Even Charon probably would go to the most likely hiding places before anything else. Not Bell.

Xen waited impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. Bell was about three-quarters of the way across the main floor when there was a splintering crash, and her heat signature jerked downward three feet.

"Bell?" Xen called. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," said the android's voice. "Just fell through the floor, is all."

"Do you need help?"

A short laugh was the only response. Xen listened to the sound of more wood splintering as Bell freed herself.

"Anyway, I found something," she said. "Looks like somebody left a cache here, under the floorboards. Although unless you want some cheap whiskey, I don't think that's likely to be much use."

"Oh," Xen said.

"And there's an ammo box," Bell went on. "Hang on a second, I'll open it."

Xen listened impatiently to the loud _click _that followed.

"Huh," said Bell. "Five frag grenades... A leather belt... A couple of boxes of 10mm ammunition... Two stimpaks..."

"Bring those," Xen said. "Charon?"

"I will want t'grenades," said Charon.

"Did you hear that, Bell?" Xen asked.

"Yep. Grenades and stims. And hey, look what we have here. Five alien blaster rounds."

"Really?" Xen asked.

"Really," said Bell. "Hang on, I'm coming back."

Xen watched her come tramping out of the ruined house, pockets bulging with grenades. She had a handful of little canisters in one hand and the two stimpaks in the other. There was a large tear in one of her pant legs that had not been there before. Under it, Xen glimpsed a thick, taut thigh with a sharp piece of wood as large as her hand sticking out of it. There was no blood.

"You're hurt," Xen said.

"Not hardly," Bell said calmly. She held out the handful of canisters to Xen, who caught them in her cupped hands. "Who gets the stimpaks?"

"Charon," Xen said. "Changeling's already carrying a lot of them."

"Here you go," Bell said, and offered the little syringe units to Charon. He stowed them somewhere about his person, then began to do the same with the grenades as she dug them out.

"That's all of it," Bell said finally.

"What about your leg?" Xen asked.

"Oh. No big deal." Bell seized the offending piece of wood with one hand and jerked it loose. Xen winced. Bell looked at her with raised eyebrows as she tossed it aside. "Watch."

There was a deep flesh-colored pit left behind, bloodless and uninflamed. As Xen watched, it crept slowly closed. The flesh sealed shut with no sign of any puncture.

"See?" said Bell. "I wish I had a bottle cap for every time some joker with a scalpel had to try that trick. It doesn't hurt. Well, not much. What are you going to do now?"

"What's the nearest human settlement on the map, Changeling?" Xen asked. Changeling glided over to the nearest intact wall and projected the map.

"Here is our current location," said the packbot, and a glowing red dot appeared far to the North of the map's center. The image zoomed in on the area, although not much more detail appeared. "My data shows the nearest town as Old Olney."

"We'll try there next," said Xen.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

"Changeling," said Xen. "Does your data show the town as infested with deathclaws?" She lay atop a small knoll overlooking a parking lot at one edge of town. A couple of hundred yards away, an enormous shape stalked among the defunct prewar cars. It was upright, twice as tall as a man, and the shape of the horns and tail were quite distinct. The deathclaw tended to let its long foreclaws rest on the ground when it was not moving. Occasionally the starlight would reflect from a gleaming eye.

"Negative," said Changeling. "I have mapping information only. I remind you that situations like this one were your ostensible reason for bringing Charon with us."

"Charon's never been here," Xen said, resisting the urge to tell Changeling to shut up. It was never any use snapping at a bot, and it would give her the idea she had the upper hand. "Have you, Charon?"

"No," said Charon, who lay beside her, tracking the creature with the barrel of the combat shotgun. Xen had had to tell him promptly and firmly not to attack it on sight. She probably imagined the reproachful set of his shoulders. Bell lay on Charon's other side, and Changeling hovered behind them with her sensor light cloaked.

The deathclaw huffed through its nostrils – the sound was audible even at two hundred yards – and turned to wander off back toward the opening of a street. Xen could clearly make out the heat signature of a second enormous thing there. They tended toward darker maroons, almost purples, a normal body temperature lower than a human's.

"I wonder how many of them there are," Xen said.

"Too many," said Charon immediately. "I can certainly kill one deathclaw. Probably two at once. More dan two would pose a difficulty wit' regard to preventing injury to yourself and Changeling."

"What about injury to you?" Xen asked.

"Dat also," he said calmly. "I am not sure about Bell."

At this point Bell was heard to mutter words to the effect of _me, neither._

"Does the town have sewers?" Xen asked Changeling.

"Affirmative," said the packbot. "They are entered via manhole covers throughout the town. There is some connection between the sewage system and the town's underground transportation as well."

"Would these manhole covers be too small for a deathclaw to fit through?" Xen asked.

"It is likely. The town also has storm drains, however, which are not. I remind you that deathclaws are very intelligent animals."

"Acknowledged," Xen said, remembering this from her reading. "So they're probably in the sewers, too."

"Their numbers will be fewer below ground," Changeling said. "They are aggressively territorial, and space is less there."

"Enough that we'll only run into them one at a time?" Xen asked.

"Insufficient data. At the intersection of territories non-agonistic interactions are possible," said Changeling, which was more or less what Xen had expected to hear.

"So what are they eating in there?" she asked, suddenly curious. "Each other? There can't be many people left in the town, can there?"

"I find no human heat signatures," said Changeling. "Small animals might escape the range of my detection apparati, however. Deathclaws will not become cannibalistic until all other options are exhausted."

"So they're probably fairly hungry," Xen interpreted this.

_Which means they'll be very alert for unusual sounds. Or smells. Or movement._

"I don't suppose your mapping information gives any indication of _where _the manhole covers are?" Xen said.

"It does not," Changeling said. "Xen, I detect no alien energy signatures within my range. To enter the town at all would be foolhardy in the extreme."

"But your detection range is too small for that to mean anything," Xen said. "And that's a good-sized town. Let's assume that we're going in there. Charon, how would _you _suggest we do it?"

"I would suggest we enter dat building wit' as much stealth as possible," Charon said, indicating the nearest structure across the parking lot with a minimal jerk of his head. "Probably t'rough t'nearest window, which is too small to admit a deathclaw. Den I would put something heavy across the door, climb up to t'roof, and shoot everyt'ing wit'in visual range. Den we will have a secured area and a viewpoint from which to survey the area for targets and entries to t'sewer."

Xen mulled this over for a moment. "That sounds good to me. Does anyone have another suggestion?"

"Should I survive to assist in the raising of your clone after your demise, I will strongly suggest she be physically prevented from leaving the Lab until at least age twenty-one," said Changeling. Xen rolled her eyes.

"That's not very helpful. As usual."

"What? How old are you?" Bell asked. Xen saw her turn from watching the retreating deathclaw to bestow a curious look on Xen.

"Seventeen," said Xen. "You?"

"Let's see," said Bell. "By my count, I've been consciously operational for five years, two months, three days, six hours, and so far, fifteen minutes. Or around an hour older than B2-10, who was next in the same production run. She's still back in the lab. I remember her as kind of stupid." Bell shrugged. "I guess I was, too, before I hit the glitch and my data acquisition snowballed."

"_My _siblings are all dead," Xen said. "Alien/Xenoorganic Hybrids #1-18. None of them made it out of the tank. Most of them had more xeno DNA than I do. Either the allergies got them, or the immune problems, or they weren't lucky enough to hit this particular neotenous mutation and survive direct ultraviolet exposure." She pointed at one of her eyes.

"So it really was just you and your robots," Bell said.

"That's right," said Xen.

Bell turned to look back across the parking lot. "I'm sorry. I don't know anything about tactics. But I'm good at lifting heavy things, if Charon ends up needing help with that."

"I am sure that will be useful," said Charon, his diction suddenly crisper.

"Then whenever you're all ready," said Xen.

"When I tell you, run as quietly as you can to that window." He pointed. "Changeling will go inside first and scan for any hostile presence. Then you. Then Bell. Charon will enter last."

"Acknowledged," Xen said, not missing the sudden third-person reference.

_But then, I know who it is I'm talking to. I guess I should be honored that Charon's letting him speak to me directly._

Charon nodded once, watched until the deathclaws were out of sight, and said, "Run."

Xen got up and ran across the uneven ground with her holster bumping against her hip. Charon and Bell kept pace easily beside her, and Changeling sped along at a stable hover on her left. The parking lot seemed suddenly larger now that she had to look down every second or so at her feet. Charon, whose night vision was presumably only human, did not stumble, so she would feel particularly stupid if she twisted her ankle.

Her heart was thudding in her ears before they were halfway across. She knew she could walk for twenty miles a day. She'd seldom tried to run. Xen tried to focus on the building ahead and the ground below at the same time, but no giant heat signature loomed up in front of her. The shotgun, which Charon held easily in one hand, was a cold but very welcome presence to her right.

At last, they reached the shadow of the building. The window was perhaps five feet above the ground.

"Firing," said Changeling, and scored a neat rectangle around the edges of the glass. It fell inward with a tinkle and a crash. The packbot zipped up and in, so fast that the cargo net trailed almost straight out behind her, only just fitting through the narrow space. A few weeks' worth of meals earlier, it would not have gone through at all, Xen thought. There was a further crunch and tinkle from inside, probably Changeling clearing the glass away.

"Negative for hostiles," said Changeling's cool, flat voice. Xen was seized by strong hands and lifted, and a second later her moccasined feet were over the sill and she was inside. She moved out of the way, stepping around a neat pile of glass shards, and Bell vaulted easily over the sill and stepped off to one side. Xen waited impatiently, but Charon did not come. She almost swallowed her tongue at the sound of feet running. Big feet. Taking inhumanly long steps, the sounds of impact far apart.

"I see you," said a guttural accent from outside, and the shotgun went off, unbelievably loud in the hush. There was an animal scream, a long shrieking roar. "_Yeah. _Ya like dat, ya bastard?"

"That is enough. Get inside!" said the crisper voice.

"Better him dan me," said the first one, and then Charon chinned himself up on the glassless sill and climbed inside with the shotgun on his back. Xen felt slightly sick to her stomach, and there was a tightness in the back of her throat. Charon's body temperature had risen perhaps half a degree, consistent with exertion.

"Was that a deathclaw?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Charon, and then in a more normal voice, "You should move away from t'window. Bell?"

"Sure," said Bell. Xen backed away from the window and turned to look at the room. It had been a tavern once, or something like it. There were tables scattered around and a bar across the other side of the room, bottles still neatly lined up here and there. A spotty mirror hung behind it, tilted slightly downward to show the whole floor. She could see herself, standing in the dust her feet had stirred up, and Changeling's teacup-shaped chassis with her scanner light blinking, and Charon moving purposefully to shove the Nuka-Cola machine over across the single front door. She saw with relief that the door was made of something solid that looked like wood, not out of clear glass. Charon edged the machine over next to the door as Bell watched, then gave the top of it a shove. It rocked, then fell. Xen winced, anticipating the loud noise, but Bell's hand caught the machine six inches from the floor and she lowered it silently. Charon nodded approval as if that was exactly what he had expected to happen.

"It's not tall enough," Bell said. "Let me get the fridge."

Charon nodded again and returned to stand between Xen and the window, watching outside. Bell walked behind the bar, looked at the appliance for a second, then wrapped both arms around it and lifted. It came away from the wall as if it were made of cardboard. Xen swallowed against a scratchy throat as she watched Bell carry the appliance back over to the doors, cord trailing. She set it on its side on top of the overturned Nuka-Cola machine. Something clinked from inside it. Bell lifted the door open and peered inside.

"Want some crunchy mutfruit?" she asked. "Or a warm beer?"

"Ew, no thank you," said Xen, and swallowed again. It was harder this time, and she noticed it was a little hard to breathe also. Her tongue felt thick, and the inside of her mouth tingled. "Changeling. Firs' aid subroutine."

"Results consistent with anaphylaxis," said Changeling. Bell's head jerked around to stare at Xen, eyes wide and mouth a thin line.

"Epi," croaked Xen. Changeling glided forward, rotating to expose the appropriate leg joint. Xen slapped her hand over it and waited for the sharp jab of the needle. Her heart jerked in her chest, but her throat cleared as if by magic. "Better," she said over the thudding in her ears. "Can we get upstairs out of the dust?"

"Yes, and Charon's damn well going to carry you," said Bell. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Definitely," Xen assured her. The light in the android's left eye was blinking rapidly on and off, as sure a sign of distress as the swearing. "Just a little off for an hour or so. Go ahead, Charon." She hated her own weak knees, but knew it would take her too long to make the stairs even if she didn't pass out halfway up. Charon hoisted her easily over his shoulder again, and off they went to the stairwell behind the bar. Xen stared around them, but there were no giant heat signatures looming nearby to threaten through the walls. The gun on her hip didn't seem very reassuring now.

"I don't see any of them," she said. "I guess Charon got the only one that heard us."

"With one fucking shot, no less," said Bell. "Must've hit it right in the eye."

"Mouth," said Charon briefly.

"Changeling, you go up first," said Xen.

The packbot entered the stairwell, shining a faint red light ahead.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Bell asked. "I can hear your pulse. And your temperature's up even though your blood pressure is down." Xen, elbows once again on Charon's shoulderblades, grinned reassuringly at her.

"That's the epinephrine," she said as Charon started to jog up the stairs. "Haven't you seen a human treated for an allergy attack in the lab?"

"No," said Bell.

"Well, now you know what that looks like." Thinking was difficult now, but talking seemed easy. She sneezed again. The stairwell was hardly less dusty than the barroom had been. "Anyway, if you can read my temperature you must be able to read Charon's. Does he look anxious to you?"

"He _never _looks anxious," said Bell. She looked dryly at the Ghoul's broad back. "The A3 units show more fucking emotion than you, Charon."

"I have no information on dat point," said Charon.

"Probably true," said Xen. "But he gains a couple of degrees if he thinks I'm in real trouble. It's the only time I've ever seen him show much in the way of physiological activation." She was talking rapidly now, and she stumbled a little over the longer word. "When we were attacked by the super mutants he had four ribs broken and didn't even blink. He wouldn't stim himself even, I had to have Changeling do it..." She blinked as the walls appeared to tilt. Charon took the first landing in a couple of strides and started up again.

"Xen?" said Bell.

"S'okay, I get kind of dizzy on the epi sometimes," said Xen. "'Specially with s-stress... Uh..." She was conscious of a cold feeling in her fingers and toes. "Oh. Don' worry, s'not fatal, prob'ly pass out in jus' a..."

The cold and the dark closed in around Bell's round and worried face.


	30. Chapter 30

_A/N: I owe much thanks to Gold Dragon from Canadian Ice & Howndog's forum for providing many screenshots and a detailed rundown of the power station (I don't have the DLC). Keeping to previous lore for this fanonverse, I maintain that the Vault Dweller is dead; but in his absence, the BOS found someone else to fetch things from dangerous places for them (probably one of those foul-mouthed Caucasian manly men from another Fallout 3 fic)._

Chapter 30

Xen sat up suddenly at the sound of a gunshot. It was another two seconds before she was actually awake. She opened both sets of lids to find herself on a flat concrete roof under the starry sky. Her clutching fingers found the olive drab blanket under her. It was, she thought, undoubtedly meant as a protection against further allergens, though less dust had gathered up here than down below. There was a low coping around the edge of the rooftop in front of her, and there Charon knelt, aiming the combat shotgun over the edge. As she watched his broad upper body turned slightly, tracking something that must be too far away to hit. Changeling hovered nearer to Xen, sensor light blinking regularly with repeated scans.

Bell squatted near her, watching her closely.

"What's going on?" Xen asked.

"Charon's shooting at deathclaws," said Bell. "I guess he got one."

"I see." Xen staggered upright. Her heart jumped alarmingly at the change in position, and she steadied herself with a hand on the bot's chassis. "I wasn't out long enough for the epi to wear off," she said. She hadn't noticed the background thump and hiss of her own pulse when she woke up. It was just that, background.

"Just a couple of minutes," said Bell. "Does that happen every time?"

"No. Only when there's stress, and more allergens." Xen smiled briefly. "It happened when I hired Charon. He was working at a tavern, and the first thing he did after I bought his contract was to shoot his last employer." Xen stepped off the blanket, picked it up, and gave it a good shake before wadding it back into the cargo net that dangled beneath the packbot

"Really? Why?" Bell asked.

"He said it was because the man was an evil bastard," said Xen.

Bell quirked one black eyebrow. "Sounds like a good reason to me."

"I thought it might," said Xen. She edged over toward the coping, trying to get a view of the street without crossing into Charon's line of fire. Old Olney seemed to be laid out in a fairly orderly grid, judging by the pattern of rooftops and the neat interruption of streets between them.

Charon was muttering to himself again.

"Is there a problem, Charon?" she asked.

"T'range is not optimal for dese lighting conditions," said Charon.

"Charon has not been seen so far," said Changeling. "Please remain back from the edge."

"Oh. Sorry, Charon," said Xen, and stopped moving forward. "Too bad we didn't bring that sniper rifle we found." She looked around thoughtfully. Her eyes fell on the roof of the next building, over on her left on the side away from the parking lot. It had a flat roof accessed by a stairwell, just like this one. The stairwell door was open. Scattered around it were shreds of cloth, bits of what looked like bone, and a truly horrible set of dark stains. There were also two ammunition boxes and a couple of weapons.

"So what are those over there?" she asked.

"Where?" asked Charon. Xen pointed. Charon eeled over to the coping on that side for a better look. Xen could see the weapons quite clearly from where she was, but then, Charon didn't have her night vision. "Dere is one automatic weapon and one hunting rifle wit' a scope," said Charon. "I would guess dere is ammunition for dem also."

"Can we get them?" Xen asked.

"I don't think that's a good idea," said Bell. "I know human blood when I see it."

"I strongly agree," said Changeling.

"I don't understand how deathclaws could've gotten up there," Xen said. "The stairwell door is too small."

"Dere may be a fire escape on the other side of t'building," Charon said.

"Deathclaws are known to have some facility for climbing," said Changeling.

Xen thought about this. "Is there a fire escape on _this _building?"

"Hang on," said Bell, and ran to the other side of the roof. Xen watched worriedly as she leaned far over the parapet. There was a shriek of tortured metal, followed by a tremendous clatter from below_. _Bell straightened up and moved back to stand by Xen, dusting her palms. "Not any more," she reported cheerfully. "Sorry about the noise, though."

"But they could still jump across from over there, couldn't they?" Xen asked.

"Easy to fix," Bell assured her. "Just give me a minute."

"But how are you going to get over there?" Xen asked.

"Jump," said Bell. "It's only fifteen feet. I've got good servos, and I'm not any more dense than a human. I'll toss the gun over."

"Unload it first," said Charon.

"Right," said Bell, and went to step up on the parapet on the side closest to the other building. Xen watched as she took the gap between buildings in an easy standing jump. She jogged over to the other side of the roof as if this were no particular accomplishment, although Xen noticed she did go around the bloodstains. The stocky android got to the other parapet, leaned over it, and stopped. There was a deep, rumbling growl from somewhere out of sight. Xen bit her knuckle, resisting a desire to call out. Then Bell leaned forward further. There was another shriek and clatter as she detached the fire escape from the building.

An animal roar raised the hairs all along Xen's spine. Bell stepped back from the edge just as a leathery, clawed hand flew up over it, clutching at the parapet. She turned and ran back toward them. Xen's earlier suspicions were confirmed. She was much faster than Xen.

"The gun," said Charon, raising his voice to carry, and Bell scooped up the gun in one hand and the ammo box under the other arm and charged for the edge just as the deathclaw pulled itself up over the parapet behind her. They gathered themselves to leap at almost the same time, and then Bell landed solidly in front of Xen as Charon's shotgun boomed. Xen almost bit through her tongue as the deathclaw landed awkwardly at the near edge, blood running from small wounds in its face. She could see each odd spine running up its tail and its back, the gleam of its one good eye and the red ruin of the other. It was still not close, but it seemed enormous. It turned an intelligent and furious gaze on them and crouched as if to leap again.

Time slowed as its jaws creaked open, and Xen blinked as it seemed to grow suddenly and rapidly closer. Now she saw the little cracks in the yellow surface of each tooth, and she remembered belatedly that Charon had said something about shooting one in the mouth. That was all right. There was all the time in the world. She didn't feel like she reached for the .22 particularly fast, the creature's angry hiss only just beginning to sound in her ears as she flipped off the safety, chambered a round and raised the gun. It was important not to miss. But then, how could she? Not when she could see the scar on the back of its tongue, and aim right over it for the roof of the deathclaw's mouth, and pull the trigger in between her own slow heartbeats, systolic and diastolic -

The gun's report snapped her out of it. Her vision zoomed dizzyingly back out to normal. She watched in ordinary time as the deathclaw took a stagger-step backwards and crashed to the roof in a heap.

Xen took a deep breath, turned the pistol's safety back on, and holstered it. Charon kept the shotgun trained on the deathclaw, making sure it was really dead before he looked away from it. Bell looked from it to Xen.

"You said you weren't very fast with that," she said. She set down the ammo box and the rifle next to Charon and came back to stand by Xen. Charon calmly put away the shotgun and picked up the hunting rifle.

"Usually, I'm not," said Xen.

"It appears that the previous incident was not due to head injury after all," said Changeling.

"It only happened once before," said Xen to Bell. "When we were attacked by the super mutants. Everything seems to sort of slow down, and whatever I'm looking at gets really... big. Like a zoom lens." She thought about it. "It's probably the adrenaline. Anyway, you didn't freeze up. That's good, right?"

Bell raised her eyebrows. "Why would I? A laboratory animal just tried to bite me. I don't even have to work outside my base programming to deal with _that_."

"They keep deathclaws in the labs at the Institute?" Xen said.

"Sure," said Bell. "Oh, not very many, but they're useful for nervous system experiments. We had a protocol in case one of them escaped, even. They're smart about things like manual locks."

"And fire escapes," Xen said, and shivered. She felt faintly sick to her stomach, but not faint. That was something, anyway. "Can you shoot that, Charon?"

"Yes," said Charon. He sighted down the barrel of the rifle, then reached for the ammo box. "Bell, would you return for the other box? I would like t'know if it contains additional rounds for dis weapon."

"Got it," said Bell. Xen watched in some surprise as she went to the parapet, jumped back across, walked easily past the dead deathclaw, and retrieved the ammo box. She was back again in a minute. "Here you go."

"Thank you." Charon opened the second box. Xen guessed it didn't have what he wanted, because he grunted and went back to loading the rifle from the first one.

"Charon," she said. Something that had been niggling at her attention had just come to the forefront of her mind.

"Yes, Xen," said Charon. He did not stop what he was doing.

"When I first met you, you wouldn't talk to anybody except your contract holder," she said.

"Dose were Ahzrukhal's instructions," Charon said. He did something to the rifle that involved a loud _click-click_.

"Your contract also says you won't communicate unnecessarily without orders," said Xen.

"Dat is correct," said Charon.

"But he talks to me," said Bell.

"Exactly. Not only that, he's asked you to do things," said Xen. "More than once. How is that possible, Charon?"

Now he did lift his head and look at her. "Previous to our encounter with t'mercenaries, you instructed me to use my initiative in utilizing offensive and defensive assets," Charon said. "Do you wish to rescind dat instruction?"

"Not at all," said Xen. "I just don't see how it's relevant."

"Bell represents an important defensive asset," said Charon. He crawled easily back over to his previous position and trained the rifle over the parapet. Xen watched him sweep it slowly back and forth, staring through the scope with one red eye.

"That's it?" Xen said.

"Important?" Bell said. She did not seem insulted by this description. "Nobody's ever called me that before."

"Very, for him to act that way," Xen said. "But then, you've never said no to anything he's asked you, either."

"Well, no," said Bell. "Why would I? He hasn't asked me to do anything that wasn't within my capabilities."

"Some people would object to being told what to do," said Xen. "With all that's happened to you, I'm surprised you don't."

"You mean because he's male?" Bell asked. "I'm still running suboptimal on that one, but I've managed to code an individual exception. I'm kind of proud of how the sequence turned out - "

"I mean because he's _organic,_" Xen said. "Didn't you run away from people telling you what to do?"

Bell shook her head. "I ran away from not being able to say no. It's an important difference."

"Yes," said Xen. "I see that it is."


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

_He crouched behind the dead truck, rubbing a tiny amount of fine ash between his fingers. His khaki trench coat hung draped over one arm, up out of the dust. It was a very human gesture. Many things about him were so. Even in his own mind he spoke to himself as if he were a man, with ifs and whens and pictures and suppositions; and if there was in his thinking a bit more precision, a bit more singlemindedness, and certainly a more accurate memory than most, well, that was only to be expected. _

_He had no particular way to distinguish human ashes from any animal's. He did have sufficiently advanced vision to recognize human blood when he saw it, however, and it was certainly human blood that was spattered all over the site._

_More importantly, he was quite able to recognize the sonic restraint collar in his other hand. It was broken in two, which to him seemed crude and unnecessary. But then, that was the B series for you. Crude. Simple. It was why B2-09 had been easy to track and also why the mercenaries had easily trapped her._

_But someone else had pried off the back panel and pulled out the power source. No android could function to that level with the collar on, as he had very good reason to know. He assumed the collar had come off after whoever-it-was had killed all three Talon Company mercenaries, and before they made off with several million dollars in Institute property. B units, so brilliantly suited to dealing with accidents or dangerous animals, usually reacted very poorly to human violence. He wondered if she would even be salvageable by the techs._

_But that was not his problem. Traces in the dust said he was likely have much more of a problem with the wielder of the combat shotgun which had blown the mercenaries to doll rags before they were atomized with a weapons-grade laser of uncertain manufacture. The one in the child-sized moccasins, who had foolishly tracked through an ash pile a few inches from him, could by no means have carried such a thing. B2-09 would have been in no condition to do anything to human bodies. That meant there was probably a robot involved as well. _

_He got up and looked inside the truck again. Spectral traces there told him what the mercenaries had been doing that had made them so easy for their killer to take them by surprise. He felt a moment's cold anger himself, something that would indeed have startled his makers (symptomatic as it was of emotional states that he was supposed to simulate, not experience). He clenched one fist without knowing that he had done it. There was always the possibility that a CAU would be resurfaced and reprogrammed for outplacement on a lease when its laboratory days were over, very expensively whored out to make money for the Institute. Had the B units not been built with that in mind, it might well have been technically impossible for the mercenaries to do what they had done._

_That B2-09 had voluntarily followed the newcomers, one of whom was certainly male, was nothing short of a miracle. They must be extraordinary people._

_It was really too bad that he would have to kill both of them._

_---_

After an hour's shooting from the roof, Charon had killed every deathclaw in sight except one. That one was out of sight from the roof, because it was under the awning in front of the front door. Xen listened to the sound of enraged snarling from below.

"It must be smaller than the others," she said. "Otherwise it would have to know it doesn't fit through doorways by now. Bell said they're smart."

"Then we have another problem," said Changeling flatly. "If it is small enough to fit through the doorway it is probably also small enough to fit through the window."

"It's stopped working on the door," said Bell.

"Please move away from t'stairwell," said Charon. Xen scooted with alacrity to kneel beside him. Bell followed her and squatted on his other side. Changeling hovered off to the left, equidistant between the stairwell and the parapet. Charon set down the rifle, drew his shotgun, and turned to train it on the closed stairwell door.

Changeling was proven right a very long minute later, when the sound of splayed feet scrambling up the stairs became clearly audible. A moment after that the doorknob began to rattle.

"Xen, cover your ears," said Changeling. Xen obeyed, just in time as the door flung open and a deathclaw bounded out onto the roof. Charon fired three times in rapid succession, and so close to her ears the sound was deafening, even through her covering hands. The deathclaw fell in midleap, crashing to the roof in a jumble of skinny, leathery limbs and a spray of dark blood. In the ringing silence that followed, Xen realized that it was indeed smaller than the others she had seen, though whether starving or just not fully grown she could not tell. She realized, after a moment's thought, why Charon had not shot through the stairwell door the instant the knob rattled.

_It may be smaller, but it's still not small – and then we'd have a dead or wounded deathclaw in the stairwell, across our only way out. Particularly since we don't have a fire escape any more._

Charon calmly put up the shotgun, picked up the rifle, and returned to scanning their surroundings over the parapet. No doubt he was checking to see if the noise had attracted anything else, Xen thought.

"Xen," he said. "Clear."

"Do you see any manhole covers?" she asked.

"No," said Charon. "But I cannot see very much at ground level."

"Charon's night vision is only slightly better than a human's," said Changeling. "It should be safe for you to approach the parapet now, if you wish." If there was an overtone of disapproval in her normally toneless voice, Xen chose not to hear it.

Xen needed no second invitation. She stood up and leaned over the parapet, looking wide-eyed at Old Olney. It was only the second real city she had ever seen, after Washington, D.C. The buildings were shorter, and a little further apart. A lot of them had alleys in between them. Down at street level, the pitted concrete and the dead cars were all too familiar. Even the litter was the same, miscellaneous papers and tin cans and empty liquor bottles.

_But then, culture was pretty homogeneous in the USA by the time the bombs fell, _she remembered from her reading_._

She counted five dead deathclaws, mounded up in the intersections or slumped against buildings. One lay sprawled out like a broken toy in the middle of a street. This building was on the edge of town, next to the parking lot and the Wasteland, and he had chosen a firing position near the corner of the roof, where he could see out in both directions.

"All the ones I see are really big," Xen said after a couple of minutes. "It looks like you've cleared all the territories near us."

"Didn't miss a single time," said Bell. She smiled at Charon. He looked back without apparent expression, but once again Xen received the impression he was amused. Maybe the exposed circle of tendon around his lips had twitched.

"Others will replace them," said Changeling.

"How soon?" Xen asked.

"Insufficient data," said Changeling. "My observational files on their behavior are still too limited."

"Hm." Xen walked slowly around the edge of the roof, looking down over the parapet. It made sense to check this alley first, after all. But there was nothing resembling a manhole cover down among the remains of the fire escape, nor yet between the two buildings. She went back to the corner of the roof and stood frowning down at Old Olney. This building wasn't much taller than its neighbors, so she didn't have a good angle on very many of the alleys. "I could see better if I stood on this," she said, tapping the parapet with a long finger.

"I cannot recommend that," said Changeling immediately.

"Charon will make sure I don't fall," said Xen. "Help me up, Charon."

She was prepared this time, so it came as less of a shock when the Ghoul put both hands around her waist and picked her up and set her on top of the parapet. It was about waist-high for her normally, so it was no particular stretch for a person as tall as Charon. It was a little distracting that he left his hands in place – large, warm hands - but not so much that she couldn't do what was needed.

"There's one two buildings down, across the street," Xen said. "It's not far into the alley mouth. Changeling can probably see it from here. Put me down, Charon."

The packbot glided over to the edge as Charon set Xen carefully back down on the roof. She had no trouble regaining her balance. She was beginning to feel heavy and tired.

_The epi is wearing off. And this night is a long way from over._

"Do you see it?" Xen asked the robot.

"Affirmative," said Changeling.

"Let me check it first," said Charon.

"If you run into a deathclaw down there where it's enclosed, is that likely to be a problem?" she asked.

"It will not be a problem," said Charon with finality.

Xen looked at the sky. No rim of pale color showed above the East yet, but there was the faintest suggestion of a lighter blue to the dark sky.

"All right," she said. "Try to be back in an hour. I don't know how long we'll be safe up here."

"If dat is your order," said Charon, and turned and stepped around the dead deathclaw and vanished silently down the stairwell. Xen watched over the parapet until she saw him cross the street. He made no attempt to hide his progress. Presumably, there was nothing to hide it from. She watched him pull up the round manhole cover, peer down into the dark, and then vanish down what seemed to be a ladder.

Xen stared around at the town as she waited. A slight breeze disturbed the litter below, and the brushy sound of shifting paper drifted up. The dead thing behind her stank abominably, of reptile and blood and excrement, but her personal vocabulary of bad smells was now large enough that she was able to mostly ignore it. Old Olney showed no signs of being inhabited, and in fact it was hard to believe it ever had been. These same buildings and these same streets might have been rotting in silence for a thousand years while the monsters stalked among them.

Charon emerged from the sewer in less than an hour, but it seemed much longer. Xen heard the scrape of the manhole cover even from where she was, and almost jumped. The Ghoul climbed up out of the hole and jogged back across the street, seemingly unchanged and unharmed. Xen listened, but he made very little sound coming up the stairs. She watched him step out onto the roof.

"Well?" said Xen.

"Clear," said Charon. "I killed one deathclaw. Dere will be ot'ers. T'sewer very likely spans the town."

"How far down would you say it is?" Xen asked. Charon told her.

"Changeling, can you pick up an energy source over our heads from down there?" Xen asked.

"Conditional affirmative. It will depend on the density of surface structures above us," said Changeling. "I might be able to read through a street. Certainly not through a building with a reinforced foundation."

"I'm afraid it's the best we can do," Xen said. "Charon, lead the way."

They followed the Ghoul back down the stairs and out the unblocked front door. Xen supposed Charon had done it himself. The footsteps of Xen and Bell were the only sounds as they crossed the street under the chill and distant stars, and then they followed Charon down into the reeking dark.

There followed another of those nightmarish treks through dull and unchanging terrain that Xen was beginning to consider ordinary in her recent experience. The sewers were not claustrophobic, which surprised her a little. The ceilings were quite high, the round tunnel nearly big enough to admit a subway train. But then, a deathclaw would hardly find them livable otherwise. The lighting was more consistent than that of the subway, and the tunnels were less traveled and thus less damaged, but this only added to the grinding sameness as they walked on and on. The smell was not as bad as she'd expected. These had not been much used for their intended purpose in a very long time.

Charon killed two more deathclaws. This hardly added much interest. In both cases he simply drew the shotgun and vanished around a bend, and then they would hear the gunshots. Xen was unable to find that he ever missed, even in what must be a much darker environment to him than it was to her, and he seemed uninjured both times. She actually found herself yawning after the second one. Bell was quiet, looking and listening with hardly any comment. Xen supposed she was taking the opportunity for further internal repairs.

"Changeling," she said eventually. "What's the time?"

"Five a.m.," said Changeling. "No xenoorganic energy signature detected. We are still traveling ten degrees North of West."

"Everyone keep an eye out for a maintenance area or something where we can stop," Xen said. "Preferably with a small door."

"Amen to that," said Bell. "Even one of the big ones can't break through a concrete wall. We're probably safer down here than up there." She jerked a thumb toward the ceiling and, by extension, the surface. "Although you'll probably have to sleep on concrete. It's harder than dirt."

"I've actually slept on concrete more," said Xen. "We've done a lot of subway travel." She shrugged. "Sometimes there were mattresses, but mostly the concrete was cleaner."

They found a small room, hardly more than a repair closet, a few minutes later. Xen could not afterwards say that she slept well, but she did feel very safe with Charon and Bell between her and the door and Changeling standing guard outside.


	32. Chapter 32

_A/N: I'm sorry if I get anything regarding the Olney Underground wrong; all my detailed info is from the South Wilson building on._

Chapter 32

_Unlike the CAU he was pursuing, the hunter had no Geiger counter inside his body. He had to use a miniaturized version built by those who had sent him. Ordinarily, he left it set on mute and clipped to his lapel, that it might not give away his otherwise silent progress. It began to vibrate long before he reached the pit. He took a Rad-X, unslung the plasma rifle from his shoulder, and padded silently forward, alert for any ambush. _

_None materialized. He found a couple of dead yao guai which had clearly been killed with the combat shotgun. No one had stopped there long enough to leave any interesting record of their passing._

_He squatted at the edge of the pit and stared down at the dead spacecraft for a minute. No one had been there in many hours, and it was a puzzling object all by itself. He tracked the progress of the big one and B2-09 back to a campsite out of the irradiated zone. The man's booted feet made firmer tracks in the hard dirt, suggesting that he had been carrying something reasonably heavy. It was not hard to see what, for the small set of moccasins reappeared at the campsite. Here the two organics had slept, leaving further spectral traces. He found no evidence of serious injury to the small one._

_Flakes of dry skin where the man had slept said he was probably a Ghoul, which was an interesting fact, but unlikely to be relevant. The fact that they had chosen this particular campsite probably meant the smaller one did not have immunity to radiation. Some of the clearer traces over by the little pool said she was female, and suggested other data which he was unable to interpret. Call it a strange flavor to her scent, not quite human but emphatically not Ghoul. Or perhaps it was only some strange illness, something that would explain the need to carry her back up the slope from the craft._

_Perhaps this had something to do with B2-09's willingness to go along with these two. Or maybe she had developed sufficiently to feel gratitude toward her rescuers. He supposed it was even dimly possible that she had somehow managed to modify her own responses, banging out bits and bytes among the simple pathways in her brain._

_That would be impossible for the hunter himself, whose psychology was quite human. Even had he known how, his internal processes were far too complex and delicate to be meddled with by any but one or two of the most advanced techs. Even they would not risk it lightly. The risk of madness or imbalance or even simple retardation was too great, millions of caps and years of work lost. It was this very fact that had allowed the self-determinative malfunction to flourish unnoticed and unchecked in one of his brothers._

_How it had popped up unnoticed in a CAU was anybody's guess. The fact that B2-09 had been able to conceal it augured for a greater degree of sophistication in her reasoning than should be possible. The hunter hoped to have a chance to ask her about it. There should be plenty of time while they traveled back to the Institute. He had the new sonic collar all ready to go in the pocket of his coat._

_---_

The next night was long and dull, mostly involving more slogging through dark tunnels. Xen ate from her packaged rations, drank bottled water, and relieved herself where necessary; there were no public restrooms down in the Olney sewers. There seemed to be fewer deathclaws in evidence as they moved further West and North, but Xen wasn't sure whether to be glad or worried about this. Changeling reported only negative information. There was no alien technology anywhere near them.

"You know, there might just not be anything here," said Bell. "We're going to kind of a lot of trouble if there's not."

"There'll be something," Xen said, trying to sound sure of herself rather than just stubborn. "Whoever lived in that house thought the blaster rounds were important enough to hide them. If anybody from this town found anything, they'd have brought it back and put it in a safe place."

"I assume it is not necessary for me to point out the flaws in your logic," said Changeling.

"Shut up," said Xen.

"Acknowledged," said Changeling primly.

In point of fact, she was beginning to feel that she might have placed the others in danger for no good reason. What if there really was nothing here? Or, worse yet, what if it was here, but too well hidden for Changeling's sensors to find it? If she had been with anyone less unusually talented than Bell and Charon, would they have ever made it out of that first building?

_The fact is that you don't want to go home yet, _she told herself. _Especially with so little to show for it. And who knows? Maybe it'll be worthwhile. Maybe there will be something even better than blaster rounds here. Maybe they carried away some other tech. You can't know._

Then they found an ash pile. It was quite a large one, right in the middle of a dry tunnel. A single claw sat neatly on top. There were greasy scorch marks on the floor around it, and some on the walls as well.

"Looks like somebody else has been here," said Bell. She folded her arms and shivered. "Somebody with a damn big gun."

"Not very recently," Xen said. She looked around. "There's no fresh blood anywhere." She couldn't tell human from animal by sight, but any fresh spill would light up from its own heat.

"Doesn't mean a thing," said Bell. "Maybe they got it in one shot."

"Charon?" said Xen.

"Naw," said Charon. He looked at the wall. "Dis was done wit' a flamer or somet'ing like it, not an energy weapon."

"I concur," said Changeling. "Spectrometry indicates no recent origin for the burn marks. They are at least three months old."

"Let's keep on," Xen said. "I want to know what they wanted down here."

"It is highly unlikely that they were looking for xenoorganic artifacts," said Changeling.

"Good," said Xen. "If there were any, maybe they're still here."

Nothing so interesting presented itself for most of the night. They found one more dead deathclaw a few miles further on, this one riddled with bullets and stinking of rot as it putrefied. A few miles after that, they came to a steel door with a familiar clamshell design.

"That looks like a subway maintenance door," said Xen. "Charon?"

The big Ghoul triggered the door open without drawing his shotgun. A subway tunnel yawned beyond it. The stuttering flicker of a blue light dragged Xen instantly back to the subway under Washington, D.C., where she had seen the Raiders dying -

"Xen!" said Bell's voice. Xen blinked, and her own eyelashes fluttered against the palms of her hands. Cold sweat beaded on her spine. She realized she was standing bent over, covering her own face. Xen lowered her hands and straightened up.

Bell stood in front of her with her arms wrapped tight around herself. "What the Hell was that?"

"What did I do?" asked Xen.

"You stopped walking, and then you covered up," said Bell. "Your blood pressure jumped pretty hard. I thought you were going to seize or something."

"Behavior and physiological activation is consistent with post-traumatic stress," said Changeling. "The episode will pass momentarily."

Xen took a shallow breath and looked at Charon. He was looking around the subway with heavy-lidded eyes.

_See? Charon knows I'm all right. _

"Sorry," she said. "It's been a while since that happened. Charon had to kill a lot of people in the subway. It just seemed familiar for a second. I'll be all right."

"Okay," said Bell. They began the long journey through the Olney Underground.

---

_The hunter slowed to a walk as the distant buildings of Old Olney came into view. He unhooked the water bottle from his hip and took a drink. His on-board recycling was much better than an organic person's, just as his muscles could carry him a little further and faster, but eventually he would die without water. And that was another tradeoff they'd had to make with him. He could not live without his fleshy components._

_He accepted that, much as it occasionally inconvenienced him. It was his job to be only a little better than human. _

_His masters would have been startled by that thought, too. He smiled humorlessly as he walked toward the first parking lot. He sweated, but very little. Humans with whom he interacted would take it as evidence that he was in excellent condition, or that his nerves were unusually steady (both of which were true), not that his system kept a lower fluid balance than theirs. Most would never think to wonder about the lights in his retinas. They were too clear and too steady to be taken for artificial. He had never in his short life shown the kind of system-threatening glitch that would cause one to blink._

_He unslung the plasma rifle again and crouched behind a ruined car, surveying the scene. There were two dead deathclaws in sight, near the broken window of the nearest building. The hunter smiled more genuinely. These he must ascribe to his large friend with the combat shotgun. Was it ever annoying for him, the hunter wondered, to be saddled with the little one? Was she a child of his, somehow spared the radiation that had changed him? Or his lover, and just of an unusually small size? What was the tie that bound someone who could kill so easily and so well to someone who needed to be carried up steep hills? Hired muscle would never endure so long or so much as this man had. The hunter had considerable experience with mercenaries, had even posed as one himself._

_The hunter surveyed the scene for a moment more, assessing for signs of life, then got up and jogged over to climb in the empty window frame._

_---_

Xen was grateful for the chance to wash up at a functioning tap, but after that, the Underground seemed to go on forever. It was well after midnight when Xen rounded a corner and was hit by the nauseating stench of rotting flesh. She covered her mouth with her hand, fighting off another flashback. Charon had not drawn the shotgun.

_We're still safe, _she told herself firmly, and lowered her hand, trying to breathe through her mouth.

"Christ, that stinks," said Bell. "Give me a second. I'm squelching about five different alarm routines."

"What happened _here_?" Xen asked no one in particular. The tunnel ahead of them was scattered with the remains of people and deathclaws. Some of the humans were in pieces: a torso here, a leg there. She couldn't tell how many of them there had been originally. There appeared to have been two deathclaws.

"Assessment complete," said Changeling. "Probable overlap at the edge of two territories, as previously predicted. Insufficient data regarding the presence of the Ghouls."

"Ghouls?" Xen forced herself to look more closely at the rotting corpses. Now that she was looking for it, they did seem further gone than the deathclaws. Even with her inner lids open, the blue aura of radiation around each one was so faint that she had missed it.

Charon was already kneeling beside the nearest body, going through its clothes. If the state it was in bothered him, he gave no sign. He transferred a pair of bobby pins and five bottle caps to various pockets around his leather garments, then moved on to the next one.

"Bell, are you going to be able to follow me through here?" Xen asked. "There's no way around."

"I'll just look at your back," said Bell. "Only damn well try to hurry, okay? The sooner we're out of sight of this many dead guys, the fewer fucking loops I have to pull out of." She was looking at her feet as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world, and the light in her left eye was flickering like a strobe.

"I understand," said Xen. "I see a door over there. As soon as Charon has cleared it, we'll run, all right? We'll wait on the other side of it."

"Thank you," whispered Bell.

"Charon," said Xen. "Clear the door."

"I will obey," said Charon. He pocketed a final stimpak, straightened up, and jogged over to the door, stepping over an out-flung claw as he went. Xen watched as he triggered the door open and stepped through. A moment later she heard him say, "Clear."

"Ready?" Xen asked Bell. Bell nodded quickly. "Go."

She ran as fast as she could, trying not to trip over body parts and breathing as little as possible. The floor was black with blood, but it had dried; only very occasionally would her foot stick to a tacky patch of something unmentionable, and then she would pull loose and run on. Bell was so close behind her that she could feel the warmth of her body. Behind them, she heard the soft hum as Changeling glided along, effortless and unperturbed.

She reached the door and stepped quickly through and out of the way. Bell shot past her, dodged awkwardly around Charon, and skidded to a stop just before she hit a concrete staircase. Changeling slid in behind them with somewhat more poise. The clamshell door hissed shut behind the packbot.

Xen blinked as she realized it was suddenly lighter. She looked up. Stars winked above her.

"We're outside," she said stupidly. "Is it safe?"

"Yes," said Charon. Xen went up the stairs. It was somewhat startling to find herself in the ruins of a building instead of on the street. It must have been a large structure, once. A dirty tile floor stretched out in front of her. Piles of crumbled cement, jutting rebar, and glittering shards of broken glass were everywhere. She looked up. Something had destroyed the middle of the building and left the edges mostly intact. Most of each floor remained around the edges, a ragged set of shelves tilted in toward the center. Xen counted at least three floors. Someone had laid boards across the gaps between some of the bigger ledges, forming bridges and ramps.

"Those look like more scorch marks," said Xen. They blackened the ground and the walls in many places around them, impossible to miss on the pale gray concrete.

"There's bullet damage, too," said Bell. "All over the place. Somebody had quite a fight here. I wonder who it was." She shivered. "They're long gone now, anyway. I get no heat signatures anywhere near us, except us."

"Me, neither," said Xen. She looked around. "I don't see any bodies. They must've taken them away."

"Or the deathclaws got them," said Bell. Xen looked quickly at Charon again, but he had not drawn the shotgun.

"Xen," said Changeling. "I have detected what appears to be a xenoorganic energy signature."


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

_The hunter nudged the cover off the sewer entrance and stood back. There were no ambushing gunshots from below. He detected no breathing presence. Though he had no infrared vision, his hearing was quite keen. He hung up the plasma rifle. Then he took another drink of water, restored the bottle to his hip, and climbed down the ladder._

_He was beginning to suspect the small one must have some sort of illness. The Ghoul had carried her up the stairs of the abandoned building, and the dust on the roof was scuffed in such a way as to suggest a blanket or a tarp had been laid there. _

_It was very definitely B2-09 who had torn down the fire escapes. Among other things, the Ghoul would not be strong enough. And, since there was no reason for the other two to be familiar with all of the unit's capabilities, she had probably done it voluntarily rather than under orders. The hunter did not like to see this level of function in his quarry. It meant she was thinking rationally on some level, and that meant she probably would not let him put the collar on her voluntarily. _

_It was within his mandate to destroy the CAU if he could not recover her, but he did not want to do that. Disposing of a DCUVRAP body would be difficult and time-consuming. That was a secondary consideration, however. More important to the hunter was the fact that he had never failed to bring back his target at least partly functional. He did not like to destroy others of his own kind if he could help it._

_There was a dead deathclaw not far from the bottom of the ladder. The hunter glanced at it as he ran past, long enough to verify that it had been shot through the roof of its mouth. The wound was quite gory, but it was consistent with two rounds from a combat shotgun. The Ghoul was almost mechanically consistent in the grouping of his shots, making an easy task of what would ordinarily take long minutes and probably cost more than one life. The hunter had mixed feelings about this. In principle, he approved of the steady nerves and good marksmanship that it implied. In practice, it was probably going to cause him some inconvenience._

_The hunter jogged on through the sewers toward what his map said was the Underground. He moved more slowly now, in token of the darkness of his environment and the possibility of ambush up ahead. One never knew how long it would take organics to realize they were being followed. _

---

"Bell, how are you doing now?" Xen asked.

"Tracking," said Bell. Xen looked at her. The light in her left eye was steady. "I think I'm on top of it. I'd like it if we could find another way out of here, though."

"We'll keep an eye out," said Xen. "I so order it."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling. "The energy signature comes from that direction." The packbot raised one jointed arm slightly in order to point, causing the cargo net to swing awkwardly. Xen turned to look. There was a ramp up to another level, and beyond it she could see a short hallway and a door.

"Charon," said Xen. The Ghoul jogged up the ramp and went to try the door, muttering indecipherably. It opened easily. He vanished into the dim interior. A moment later he was back.

"It's clear," he said. Xen scrambled up the ramp. The others followed. The doorway led into a broad hallway with a staircase at the far end. Dust swirled in the air. The walls might have been painted beige once, but now they had faded to an unattractive dull brown where the paint was not scraped away from the dark surface under it. A steel shelf half-blocked the hall. Inexplicably, a telephone, a steel box and two little cardboard boxes of cleaner sat on the shelves. A dust mop leaned against the wall, and there was a rolling bucket nearby, just as if someone had been interrupted in the middle of some long-ago spring cleaning.

There were footprints in the dust of the floor. Large, booted footprints, leading toward the stairs. Xen looked around quickly, but saw no glimmer of heat anywhere near them. Whoever it was, he wasn't close by.

"Dey are old," said Charon. "Whoever it is was here a long time ago."

"Confirmed," said Changeling. "The signature is in that direction."

"But there's only one set of footprints," said Xen. "I wonder how he got out."

There was a small bathroom to the left as they went up the hallway. The toilet had probably been steel originally. Now it had corroded brown, and the plumbing was broken; a small geyser shot up every second or so. Xen wrinkled her nose and kept going. She was at the base of the steps when she heard the double click of the shotgun. Xen turned. Charon stood facing back down the hall with the gun in his hands.

"Oh, no," said Bell, at almost the same time that Charon said,

"Dis place is not safe."

"Up the stairs, Xen," said Changeling. "We will look for cover."

"There's nowhere you can hide," said Bell quietly. "It's him."

"Go," said Charon. Xen scooted up the stairwell, dread sitting like a lead weight on her stomach. Behind her, she heard Charon say, "We'll wait in t'stairwell."

"It won't do any good," said Bell's flat voice. After that, she was out of earshot in the upper hallway.

---

_The hunter increased his speed in the better lighting of the Underground, though he did pause once to refill his water bottle at a working tap. There was no sign that his targets knew they were pursued, so he must be catching up quickly. The small one's foot speed would be slow, much slower than the big Ghoul or B2-09 could manage. The gliding robot would not, of course, be inconvenienced by poor footing._

_He passed the pile of ashes eventually, but he correctly identified it as too old to be involved with his quarry. He moved on past the dead Ghouls for the same reason. He approached the stairwell with plasma rifle in hand. Nothing breathed there. He crouched on the stairs for a long time, listening. _

_At last he stood and walked up into the open air. His internal mapping said he should be on the bottom floor of a building on South Wilson Street. Rubble blocked any direct exit, so he couldn't be sure. He gave a cursory glance to the ascending ledges and the evidence of an old battle. That, while interesting, was not his concern. He could tell he was close. The fact that he still heard nothing meant his quarry was hidden somewhere behind walls. _

_The door at the top of the nearest ramp seemed a logical candidate. The hunter powered up the plasma rifle, listening to the low hum. Then he went softly up the ramp and stood beside the door. A shoe scuffed in the distance. The hunter smiled to himself and reached out to silently open the door._

_There was no one in the dusty hallway, and no one in the small restroom. The hunter stood with his back to the wall next to the restroom's doorway. Something did breathe in the middle distance, though very quietly. But then, the Ghoul probably had no external nares to modulate and amplify the sound of exhalation. And B2-09 did not technically need to breathe at all._

_Try as he might, the hunter could detect no other respiration. That was logical. The small one was no fighter. It would be in her best interest to leave the big one behind while she looked for a place to hide. That would mean they had somehow detected him. He supposed that was not too surprising. If B2-09 was watching along her back trail, she might well pick up his heat signature. His body temperature, like everything else about his external appearance, was human._

_In that case, it was worth a try._

"_B2-09, location," he said loudly._

_There was a short silence. Then: _

"_Here," said the voice of the CAU. It came from the stairwell a few feet away._

"_Accept B series command override 12-43-99," he said._

"_Command override accepted. State your orders."_

_The hunter frowned slightly. He was very sensitive to patterns of vocal stress. Any B2 unit should be feeling the strain of traumatic experiences at this point, but there was something..._

"_Orders follow. Place your hands on your head and walk down the stairs to my location," he said._

"_Unable to resolve your location. Please move within visual range."_

_The hunter thought about this for a moment. Then he chuckled._

"_Nice try, B2-09," he said._

"_Same to you, asshole," replied the gynoid's voice immediately._

"_Does your friend with the shotgun know how much you're worth, B2-09? Does he know you're Institute property from the Commonwealth?"_

"_Yep," said B2-09. "He knows what your orders are, too."_

"_You're not going to make this easy, are you?" said the hunter. The big Ghoul was being very quiet as he crept down the stairs. He probably thought the hunter couldn't hear him. An ordinary human wouldn't have been able to._

"_Not if I can help it," said B2-09. _

_The hunter stepped quickly out in the hall and put a glob of plasma through the stairs one tenth of one second after the Ghoul dove to one side. He got off another shot as the Ghoul tossed a grenade. The second shot missed as well, his target bobbing out of the way almost before his finger hit the trigger. This annoyed him more than a little. He was not accustomed to organic people being anywhere near as fast as he was._

_The hunter seized the grenade on the first bounce and tossed it back up the stairs. He leaped back into the little restroom a microsecond before it went off._

---

At the top of the stairs was a landing. A broom stood against the wall, half-rotten and forlorn. Xen hesitated there, then ran to the left. Changeling came close behind her. There was a computer terminal on the wall, but it was shut down, and the door beside it was open. The hallway jinked back to the right again, so that she had to make a sharp turn. There was a narrow doorway in front of her with a big, dusty space beyond it.

Xen ran out onto a high walkway with a rusty railing. In front of her was an enormous room, surely at least two stories high. It was lit only by flickering florescents overhead. Half of them were dead. Two giant doughnut-shaped masses of steel bulked off to the right, hissing out dust and smoke as something spun inside them.

_Turbines. This is a power station. _There was another steaming giant off to the left. The control panel at the other end of the room from her still had active lights, a pretty display of orange and yellow. Xen moved toward the stairs, but her heart skipped a beat as she recognized a familiar three-wheeled shape at their base. She flattened herself back against the wall.

"Changeling," she said. "There are security bots."

"Negative for active power sources," said Changeling. "They are deactivated, Xen."

There was a shouted conversation going on somewhere behind her, Bell and an unfamiliar male voice. Xen couldn't tell what was being said.

_But there _is _someone there, and Charon told me to go._

"Run silent and cloak your sensor," said Xen, and went down the stairs and into the dusty gloom. Up close, the sentry bot's upper body was canted to one side, its arms hanging lifeless. The room had too much open space. There was nowhere to hide. She could crouch down behind the generators, but anyone would think to look there.

_I need something defensible, _she told herself. She tried not to let the phrase _last stand _creep into her consciousness as she ran between the generators. There were a few giant crates, but they provided no more cover than the generators. She gave the control panel a cursory glance. There were two doors, one to the right and one to the left. Through the right one, she could see desks with computer terminals.

_It's an office space. _To her left, a corridor yawned. She took that way as the more hopeful of the two. An explosion rattled the floor under her feet when she was halfway to the maintenance closet at the end. Xen stifled a shriek with her hands over her mouth.

_Charon has grenades. Maybe he got him._ She dared not assume it. Xen looked into the closet, but it had no door, just a dead maintenance bot and some shelves. The corridor zigzagged off to her right. She followed it until it opened into another two-story room, this one perhaps half the length of the generator room. There was a workbench on one wall. She had to thread her way among a scattering of toppled barrels to get to the steel staircase up to the second level. A quick glance revealed only another maintenance closet and some cubicles. There was another corridor off to the right.

This room was darker than the generator room had been, and much darker than the starry night outdoors had been. Xen could see few colors in the flattened spectrum of low light, but shapes were quite clear. She hoped desperately that the unknown hunter did not share this advantage. That seemed pointless. If he was an android, like Bell, it would be ridiculous to leave him with senses that were no better than human – especially if he was supposed to hunt other androids.

The dust was getting to her. She was starting to feel a tightness in her throat again.

_Epi has to wait. I have to find a safe place first. Get to cover._

Xen tried to breathe shallowly as she ran to the next corridor. It terminated in a closed security door with a terminal beside it.

_Yes, _she exulted silently. She could not stop to worry whether there was enough time. Xen powered up the terminal and went to work. The passwords were never very hard to guess. As in the current case, there were only so many six-letter words beginning with T and ending with R.


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

_The hunter peered cautiously out of the restroom's doorway when his ears had stopped ringing. No bleeding, broken body lay on the stairs, though the grenade had left a gaping hole on one side and shrapnel chips in the walls. In fact, he detected far too little blood for any serious injury to have been inflicted. The Ghoul had probably caught a couple of chips of flying plaster, no more. It was even possible that he'd had the presence of mind to dive behind B2-09, whose body could absorb any number of tiny chips of flying debris without real harm. _

_Now, if auditory evidence was anything to go by, both of them were well away. The hunter swore silently to himself and began the slow, slow process of creeping up the stairs, his sensitive ears alert for the inevitable ambush._

_---_

The security doors swung open after only a few seconds at the keyboard. Xen ran through, waited for Changeling to pass her, and then turned to trigger them shut again. There was another flickering green terminal on this side, but that wouldn't really matter. Once unlocked, it would take a supervisor's code to lock it again, something that wouldn't be available through the usual cryptic procedure -

"Firing," said Changeling. Xen ducked away from the rain of plastic shards as Changeling's laser fried the box.

"Why'd you do that?" she croaked at the packbot. "Now Charon and Bell can't get in, either!"

"Highly unlikely," said Changeling. "I doubt it will even stop our pursuer. Accordingly, I strongly recommend you continue to search. Epinephrine is also advised at this - "

"I know," said Xen, and held out her hand for the epi. She didn't wait for the adrenaline to hit, and consequently almost fell down when her heart sped up in mid-step. Glowing green fungi grew up out of the ribcage of a prewar skeleton on the hallway floor. Xen barely avoided stumbling over it as she turned to the left and ran.

Boxlike emitters clung to the walls at about Xen's knee-level. From Changeling's silence, they were deactivated. Xen toyed momentarily with the thought of turning them on, but they were too low to be a real threat to a man with any ability to jump, and it would take too much time. She followed the hall to the right and up to another doorway. A tiled floor ended at a long catwalk of steel mesh. Another dead sentry bot hulked at the other end of the catwalk, slumped so that it blocked the way forward. Something that she couldn't see from the hall lit the room intermittently.

Xen staggered into the room, looking frantically around for inspiration. She stopped in blank astonishment for a moment as she saw the whole room. This was clearly another two-story space, the catwalk forming a large cross in the center between the corroded steel beams that held up the roof. The four spaces made by the catwalk were filled with enormous concrete cylinders. Above each great upward-facing container was another one facing down. More steel mesh lay across the mouth of each cylinder, and between the top and bottom openings pure blue energy crackled and hissed.

_Find something to slow him down. _Xen shook her head and looked around again. Filing cabinets lined the wall of the floor where she stood. There was another terminal beside the open door. She triggered the door shut. "Fry it," she snapped, and turned to run for the catwalk.

"Firing," said Changeling behind her. Static made Xen's hair stand up as she ran. At one point the room seemed to take on a crazy tilt, and she grabbed at a railing just in time to keep herself from going over. Xen righted herself, shook her head to clear it, and kept on until she reached the dead sentry bot. There was another one beyond it, this one blown in two.

"Changeling," Xen shouted over the noise of the cylinders. "Can you get around this?"

"Affirmative," replied the packbot from behind her. Xen dropped to her knees and crawled between the sentry's three wheel-supports. She dodged around the remains of the other one, though an upthrust spar of steel tore a hole in the calf of her jeans and scraped down her leg. The pain was sharp, though brief. She kept running. There was another door in the opposite wall.

---

_The hunter paused in the upper hallway, getting his bearings again. Around the next corner would be a good place – the combat shotgun could probably shoot through the thin plaster of the dividing wall – but he heard no sound. Probably the other man had realized that went both ways. The hunter smiled slightly. He could almost like this Ghoul._

_He crouched low and peered around the corner. There was a doorway with a dim room beyond it. He received an impression of open space beyond the narrow strip of tiled floor. He had no information on the interior of this building, but it was listed on his map as a power station. The noise he heard from the next room was probably a set of turbines. They would shield the quiet sounds of the Ghoul's movement from even the hunter's sensitive ears, and B2-09 would probably be aware of her own limitations in the area of stealth. Odds were good that the two of them were hiding in separate parts of the room. B2-09 would not want her presence to draw attention to the Ghoul and ruin his ambush. The swearing implicit in B2 error processing might provide a fine impression of belligerence, but it also meant the unit was probably far too bogged down in traumatic data inconsistencies for any physical aggression. _

_The hunter eased up to the other doorway. He risked a quick look out. There was no one on the landing or the stairs that led down. The combat shotgun was not a sniper's weapon, and – the hunter smiled again – his quarry now knew that the grenades were not a good idea. There was solid wall under the ledge and staircase. The Ghoul must therefore be enough away that the hunter could risk the balcony without being cut to doll rags._

_So what, then, would he do? The hunter took another quick look, scanning the room as best he could in the poor light. Behind the turbine at the bottom of the stairs seemed the most logical choice. It would allow the Ghoul a good view of the stairs and an easy retreat back through the exit to the left. To shoot and run was his wisest choice, if he only knew it. If it came down to belt knives at close quarters, he would almost certainly lose._

Probably, _the hunter amended silently. It had taken a very unusual set of reflexes for the Ghoul to have avoided death earlier._

_His mind was made up. The hunter took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and did a rapid dive roll out onto the balcony._

_---_

Xen was working away at yet another terminal in front of yet another doorway, this one at the end of the catwalk, when she heard distant shots. She had heard the combat shotgun fired often enough now that she could recognize it. The sound of the other weapon was a little odd, not quite like a laser.

_So Charon is still alive, at least, _she thought, and felt a little weak with relief. But she couldn't afford that. If she relaxed for one second, she would lose consciousness, and Changeling probably could not carry her.

"What's the other gun, Changeling?" she asked.

"The noise profile is a match to a plasma rifle," said Changeling behind her. "I observe that the door is already open. Please hold still for stim."

"True," said Xen, entering one more code. "_Ow_. Thanks. - And this is a security terminal, not a lock." She chose the correct command to shut off the turrets, which must be waiting just out of sight around the corner. "Although I don't know why they're not showing any heat profile..."

_Turrets deactivated, _said the green screen. Xen looked cautiously around the corner. The hallway was lit with a warm sepia glow from the wall of lights and buttons, controlling who-knew-what. There was, indeed, a recess in the end of the hallway that was easily large enough for two Mark V turrets. She could not help observing a distinct lack of actual turrets, however. Instead there were scraps of twisted metal and scorch marks on the walls.

"Oh," she said.

_Looks like they were taken out by whoever killed all the sentry bots. _Belatedly, Xen looked at the floor of the new hallway. Large, booted footprints in the dust led off to the right. _So he was here._

"Changeling, where's that xenoorganic signature now?" Xen asked.

"Less than six meters," said Changeling. "It probably originates from the recess."

"Not from the turrets," Xen said.

"Negative. Xen, we should not take time for this."

"Yes, we should," said Xen, and went to look inside the recess. There was a high shelf, barely in her reach, on each side. An ammunition box sat on each one. Xen stretched up to grab the first one and almost concussed herself as the heavy box came down. She dodged out of the way and winced at the noise as it spilled out on the floor.

Glowing blue cylinders rolled across the hallway. Xen snatched them up as quickly as she could, stuffing the pockets of her jeans. She managed to get down the second ammo box without dropping it. She set it down on the floor and popped the lid. There were more blaster rounds inside. Xen added them to the others.

"Hold still while I find it," said Xen, and dug frantically through the cargo net until she found the knapsack that held the blaster.

"This is probably futile, Xen," said Changeling, almost gently.

"If he gets past Charon, don't you want me to have the best possible weapon?" Xen asked.

"If he is able to kill Charon, I doubt seriously whether _any _weapon will be efficacious," said Changeling.

"You know, I never remember Tori being this pessimistic," said Xen.

"Tori was acting from a different experience base than I am," said Changeling.

"So am I," said Xen. "Let's see where this hallway goes."

---

_The hunter lay behind the turbine, gritting his teeth as he jabbed a third stimpak into his left shoulder. He didn't like to set down the plasma rifle, but the Ghoul was at this point in no better shape than he was. Slightly worse, he hoped. He knew at least a couple of spatters of plasma had hit the man's face. Maybe the hunter would be lucky and he'd lose an eye before he managed to deploy his own stims. Or perhaps he would deploy them too late, and the plasma would burn his arm off._

_It wasn't very likely. The Ghoul was proving a better strategist than the hunter had expected. He hadn't been hiding behind the turbine. He'd been back in the doorway of the exit, where he could easily shoot at someone who was shooting at the space in back of the turbine. The hunter had dodged and fired just in time to avoid having a large hole blown through the center of his body._

_There was still no sign of B2-09. She might well be out of the building by now. The hunter didn't really think so, however. If she'd just been planning to run, she would not have waited for him beside the Ghoul. Probably what little stability she was able to retain was centered on these two organics. Well, that should make it easier to collar her once he'd killed them both._

_But, in the words of a very ancient proverb the hunter had once heard a tech utter, one must not put the cart before the horse. The hunter rotated his shoulder joint to make sure it was working. Then he hefted the plasma rifle and got carefully to his feet. The Ghoul had run into the office space off to the right, from which there was no exit. Presumably he was there now, waiting. The hunter thought about this. He could walk into a hail of bullets, which concept he did not relish. He could go looking for B2-09 and ignore the other two, which was probably also not a good idea._

_Or he could go and look for the small one, and possibly draw the big Ghoul after him for a change. The hunter liked that idea. He checked the office door one more time and leaped for the exit._

---

"That sounded like the plasma rifle again," said Xen, stopping suddenly to listen. The sound repeated twice more.

"I believe that was the first security door," said Changeling.

"Oh, _no." _Xen wrapped her fingers more tightly around the blaster's grip as she started to turn around. There were still too many walls in the way for her to read any heat signatures along their back trail.

"You must not go back for them," said Changeling. "You will only be killed. I am sure Charon would not wish that."

"Damn you," said Xen, but she turned and pushed on.

The room at the end of the hall had a great shaft in the center, its rim supported by steel beams. Red lights ringed the upper edge. Xen squinted as her eyes adjusted to the odd ambience. There were big metal knobs on the walls of the pit and in the rising shaft over it, but no hint as to their function. Perhaps they had something to do with the very empty pedestal in the middle of the pit's floor. The booted footprints led up to it and out again, back through another door to Xen's left. The rest of the room held no clue. There were more filing cabinets, more rows of incomprehensible lights and buttons, and a few steel tables and chairs covered with miscellaneous clutter. Someone had built what seemed to be a ring-shaped Van de Graaf generator, probably as a toy. Charges writhed around an upright steel ring connected to a power source in its base. The whole thing was not more than two feet high, sitting on a tabletop.

Xen heard two more shots from the plasma rifle. Then the combat shotgun roared in response. Something twisted in her gut, making her dizzy and sick. Which was worse? To know that Charon had been alive at the last shots she heard, or to wonder if he was dead now?

"That was closer," Xen said. "They've got to be almost to the second door. There's not much point in running away now, is there?" She looked around thoughtfully. "Eject one of the epi pens and give it to me."

"Further epinephrine will carry substantial risk of spontaneous cardiac arrest," said Changeling, but perforce obeyed the order. A plastic cylinder the size of an ink pen shot out of one arm joint and clattered to the floor. Xen picked it up.

"He'll be here soon," Xen said. "Maybe both of them. Maybe not." And oh, it was like pulling teeth to say it. She went to crawl under a steel table in the darkest part of the room, far from the door. Dust puffed up around her. "The best chance I have is to make it happen again."

She didn't have to explain what _it _was, not while she was carefully loading the alien blaster. She laid the epi pen in the dust of ages in front of her as she lay prone under the table.


	35. Chapter 35

_A/N: I'm not clear whether Charon's combat shotgun is actually supposed to be firing buckshot of some kind or just large bullets in the game. There are no "wounds" to judge from, just blood splatter and/or the same dismemberment that happens with every game weapon. Despite the drum on the barrel and the name, in gameplay he doesn't seem to fire it on automatic at all, nor does he have any white phosphorus (or, as my Dad called them when consulted on this point, 'Willy Peter') or other special rounds. So, if I'm being inaccurate, hopefully it's on top of Bethsoft's own inaccuracies and I can be excused._

_There's no way I can actually replicate Bell's thought processes, which would probably look to you or me like a stream of numbers, but I wanted to give some idea of what it's like to be inside her head under the circumstances._

Chapter 35

_The hunter sprinted down the zigzag hallway, listening to the running footsteps that were close – but not close enough – behind him. He knew from the sound of air movement up ahead that the next room would be large, so he was prepared when he burst into the two-story storage area with its workbench and stairwell. He rejected the stairs at once, squinting into the dim; his enemy was too close. Instead he leaped for a barrel and bounced from the top of it to the top of a tall shelf, and from there he hurled himself over the railing of the next floor's balcony just in time to avoid being shot. Chips of plaster rained from the ceiling over his head as he returned fire. He missed, but the Ghoul had to take cover for long enough that he was able to gain the doorway._

_He frowned slightly at the closed security doors. The terminal was showing an error screen. A couple of wads of plasma took care of that problem, and he kicked the half-melted doors the rest of the way open easily. The glow of hot metal lit the next corridor a little, enough that he didn't trip over the skeleton in the hall. He heard the machine-gun rattle of the other man's footsteps on the stairs very clearly. The Ghoul was making no attempt at stealth now. _

_Whoever had built this building had built hardly any long, straight hallways, almost as if they had fields of fire in mind. The hunter was out of sight around a jag in the corridor long before the Ghoul gained the hallway. He pulled up sharply at the closed door, firing the plasma rifle again; there wasn't time to check whether it was truly locked or not. Another moment, and he was through and looking ahead to the long catwalk. _

Interesting_. He moved to one side of the door and took a half-second to survey the room full of power generators, brushing off irritation at the background noise. A dead sentry bot blocked the central walkway, a black silhouette against gray distance, but that would leave him too exposed in any case. He turned and took the leftmost catwalk, close to the wall of the room. Here he slowed, watching his footing in the intermittent lighting. He could afford to be careful. With all of the beams and cylinders, there was at least some cover between him and the -_

_The shotgun boomed. The hunter flung himself forward with reflexes that were better than human. That was why he caught four pellets in his right shoulder instead of all of them in his skull. He turned his stumble into a dive roll, came up behind a support beam, and immediately turned to seek a target. At last he caught the Ghoul completely stationary, standing in the doorway and taking aim -_

_They fired at almost the same time. The hunter, whose ability to process and endure pain was almost certainly better than an ordinary man's, had the satisfaction of knowing he had pulled the trigger first. The Ghoul's shot went wide as the plasma charge hit him in the right side of the chest, and the hunter ducked back before he could fire again. The shot pinged and rattled from the beam and the wall, but this time the hunter escaped without harm._

_It was over, must be over. In a couple of seconds the Ghoul would lose consciousness, a completely uncontrollable response to the pain and the violation of an important body cavity. The plasma would be spreading as well, burning through muscle and bone and destroying much of his right lung as it scorched its way toward his heart -_

_The Ghoul rocked back on his heels, took a half-step back, and stopped. The hunter watched in something approaching shock as the wounded man reached behind himself _with his right arm_, drew a stimpak from his belt, and calmly injected it into the growing hole in his chest._

_Then he leveled the shotgun left-handed. The hunter, rapidly reevaluating once again, turned and ran._

_Even over the generators he heard the heavy footsteps behind him. They were slow now, but there was no hesitation in the sound._

---

Xen listened to the sound of more shots being fired. They were surely past the second door, now, somewhere in that nightmare of dizzy depths and lightning. She was glad she was lying down. She wasn't sure she could stand up. There was an odd, pulsing feeling between her ears, not quite a pain, but it swam up and threatened to swallow her vision if she moved too sharply.

"I remind you that I carry two Stealth Boy units," said Changeling.

"Use one yourself," said Xen from under the table. "If he can see me here, in a dark spot in a dark room, he can see infrared and it's no good anyway."

"Acknowledged," said Changeling. "I will be able to move faster without the cargo net."

"Leave it in the pit," Xen said. The packbot glided over to the shaft and sank down out of sight. Xen tracked the warm flare of her rockets down and back up again, though she was invisible to ordinary vision on the return trip. The packbot hovered over toward the left, between Xen and the door but out of her line of fire across the pit.

---

AUDITORY STIMULUS DETECTED.

_Range +/- 100 m no exact data possible._

_Identify: combat shotgun, model unknown. Probable wielder Ghoul male ID Charon._

_HEAT SIGNATURE CONFIRMED._

_Identify: plasma rifle, model Nemesis 39D. Probable wielder unidentified A3 unit. _

_HEAT SIGNATURE CONFIRMED._

_(I know who they are, dammit.)_

WARNING! DISCHARGE OF LETHAL WEAPONS IN NEAR VICINITY!

PLEASE NOTIFY A SUPERVISOR.

-ERROR-

No supervisor found.

_Locate cover to avoid possible damage to this unit._

_(I guess there's nothing else to do.)_

_Identify: deactivated Robco Mark V turret unit x2. Probable fit this unit to recess 99.92%. _

_Identify: ammunition boxes, brand unknown, open._

XENOORGANIC ENERGY SIGNATURE DETECTED. SOURCE: EMPTY BOXES.

WARNING: THIS SIGNATURE PREVIOUSLY ASSOCIATED WITH AREAS OF HIGH RADIATION.

-ERROR-

-CONFLICT WITH PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS-

Protocol deleted.

_(How about that. Xen actually did find something. I hope she's found a better hiding place than this one.)_

_Auditory stimulus and approaching biosignature detected. _

_Identify: Running biped. _

_Recognize: unidentified A3 unit._

_Visual confirmation. _

_Visual contact lost._

_(Whew. I don't think he saw me back here.)_

_Auditory stimulus and approaching biosignature detected._

_Identify: Walking biped._

_Recognize: Ghoul male ID Charon._

_Visual confirmation._

_WARNING: Unexpected aperture in right anterior thorax. _

_Arterial bleed: negative._

_Venous and capillary bleeds: multiple, small._

_Negative for symptoms of shock. Circulation otherwise normal._

_Air escape: positive (auditory confirmation)._

_(Oh, no.)_

_Probable cause: plasma rifle fire. _

_Indication: Immediate sedation, application of multiple stimpaks and evaluation for surgery. _

_ERROR: No medical supply station found. _

_Prognosis: poor. High probability of fatality. Time to collapse: insufficient data._

_Initialize first aid protocol Y/N?_

_(There's nothing to initialize it _with, _you stupid subroutine.)_

_Initialize first aid protocol Y/N?_

_Initialize first aid protocol Y/N?_

_/N (Shut the fuck up, will you?)_

_Verbal communication initialized. _"Charon? Are you out of stims?"

_Auditory stimulus detected. _

_Identify: human voice. Irregularity consistent with long-term vocal cord damage and acute loss of right lung function._

_Recognize: Ghoul male ID Charon._

"_Glk._ _Kff kff_Yeah. Stay dere. _Kff."_

_Verbal communication initialized. _"What are you going to do?"

_Auditory stimulus detected._

_-Indistinguishable-_

_Verbal communication initialized. _"What?"

_Auditory stimulus detected._

"Gonna kill him."

_Visual contact lost._

---

Xen heard the running footsteps, very quick and much too light to be Charon's. She grabbed the epi pen with her left hand.

_Better not hit it too close to the heart or brain, not if Changeling was right about the cardiac arrest risk. _She shoved the pen against the inner elbow of her jacket sleeve and depressed the button. The sharp sting told her it had worked, and then she dropped it and devoted her full attention to the door. The handle of the alien blaster seemed to conform more closely ever second to the fingers of her right hand. She was no longer sure the weapon and her hand were separable.

Her left palm was sweating, and she felt the heat prickle under the hairs on the back of her neck. Her pony tail was coming down. Hair hung to either side of her face as the sweat beaded. Her heart hammered at her ribs as if it would burst out. Then a shadow crossed the threshold, and everything slowed down.

_It worked. _But something was wrong this time. It was so hard to take aim, as if her arm was mired in mud. The form of the man was low against the doorway as a trench coat swirling about his ankles. He already had the plasma rifle raised, green lights glowing down its barrel, aimed straight at the invisible packbot. Changeling fired before her, the laser tracing a red line in the air, and Xen watched in dreamlike horror as the man ducked easily away. Her own finger on the trigger seemed unnaturally slow as he fired, and she could actually see the glob of plasma travel through the air as she struggled to exert enough pressure. The dim light from the hallway struck highlights from his short, blond hair.

Changeling's heat signature bloomed as the plasma hit. The air rippled with flame and bizarre reflection as the Stealth Boy gave out. Xen could do nothing as the packbot careened sideways, fired once more – the beam never came close to the man – and arced slowly toward the pit.

_It has to be now. _She managed to fix on the man as he tracked Changeling's agonizing fall with the rifle, and with both her hands mashing down the trigger it finally fired. There was almost no kick to the blaster, but the muzzle flash forced her inner lids shut and she was half-blind for an instant.

As she opened them it all sped up. She struggled desperately to keep that tight focus, to fire once more before the effect was over, but it slid through her fingers and was gone.

The man – the android, he must be an android – staggered back as electricity crackled through his body. He lost his grip on the plasma rifle and it spun away under a table, but when Xen shot desperately at him he dropped to the floor flat on his back and rolled away. Her next shot missed as well, and then he had knocked a table over and was behind it.

Xen wriggled out from under the table and staggered toward the pit, thinking of Changeling. She knew there was a ladder. The android was still behind his table, away from the plasma rifle. Should she try and get the weapon? He was preternaturally fast and she was not, but he must think she could repeat that first shot, or he'd already be trying -

A broad-shouldered form blotted out the light from the hallway.

"Charon, left!" screamed Xen, and then the android launched himself in a near-invisible blur and she half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder and into the pit.

---

_The hunter heard the hum of the robot's jets well before he reached the door. He had a positional fix from the moment he reached the threshold, and he was ducking before he was aware that the machine had fired. Their shots crossed. The robot's missed. His did not. He tracked the robot as it staggered in the air and fell into the shaft in the center of the room._

_That was when it went wrong._

_He heard the fizz of an energy weapon at the exact instant that the charge hit. He jerked as the agony crackled through his body, spending the charge in his nerves and starting to leave burn marks on his innards -_

_And then it stopped. He had lost the rifle. He was desperately aware of the next shot, but he fell more than dodged, his legs simply unable to hold him. He rolled to one side, knocking over a table, and lay behind it for a second as he tried to collect himself. His limbs were still weak, but with the unique structure of his synapses, he would build back charge faster than an organic. The internal trauma was another thing. He tried not to think about the pellets in his right shoulder. He could smell his own flesh where the metal had burnt it as the charge hit._

_Someone was moving, shuffling awkwardly toward the edge of the pit from the other side. It must be the small one whose ragged breathing he heard. _

_She must be on psycho. That would explain how she had managed to shoot him, and why the big Ghoul kept her around despite her periodic collapses. It made perfect sense, and he should have thought of it earlier. The hunter had never seen much point to swearing. He was tempted to do it now. He'd let her get far enough ahead to shoot up, and that was careless._

_Then his hearing cleared sufficiently for him to hear the slow, heavy footsteps approaching the door. He drew his belt knife and gathered himself into a crouch. This was it. He'd only have a second before the little gunnie could take aim again. He dared not let the Ghoul get a bead with the shotgun._


	36. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

_He'd been wrong._

_The Ghoul had already holstered the shotgun on his back, despite the half-ruin of the straps where the plasma charge had hit. He turned to meet the hunter in a half-crouch with a knife of his own. The hunter's first desperate slash was deflected easily by the gauntlet on the Ghoul's uninjured left arm. The man shoved him away and stepped back into the hallway, either to maneuver for space or to draw the hunter away from the little one. Air emerged from the cauterized wound in the Ghoul's chest with a sticky bubbling noise. Somehow, he seemed to have lost most of the skin on his face, leaving the muscle and tendon red and raw._

_The hunter righted himself easily and followed him out, seeing an opportunity to get out of visual range of the other one's weapon. His attention was concentrated wholly on the Ghoul, so he almost missed B2-09's slow advance from his right side._

_Almost. He stepped quickly to the left so that he could see them both._

_Behind him, in the room with the pit, there was a clatter and a gasp. He heard it quite clearly. The Ghoul must have heard something as well. The hunter saw his red eyes flicker that way, the first sign of any emotion he had shown._

"_I think your friend might have overdosed," said the hunter._

"_Go, Charon," said B2-09. The hunter moved further from the door and made an ironic ushering motion. The Ghoul stepped quickly past him, half-turned so that he never exposed his back, and then he was gone._

_The hunter faced the gynoid as she walked toward him down the hall. He put up the combat knife. There wasn't much he could do to a B2 unit with it, in any case._

"_They'll both die, won't they," she said. It was not a question._

"_Yes," said the hunter._

"_I don't know what's keeping him going, but it can't last. And Xen won't live without Changeling." The gynoid shivered, arms folded tightly, and stopped moving toward him. "No more stims."_

_The hunter had never heard those two names, but he guessed that they referred to the girl and the robot. He reached inside his coat slowly and came out with the sonic collar. B2-09 watched him dully. The light in her right eye flickered off. He felt real pity for what it must be like inside her head. The new determinative will must be fighting all the background programs, and she would be unused to and unable to cope with the roar of emotions._

"_It hurts, doesn't it," he said. "I'm sorry about that. I don't have a choice."_

"_I know," said B2-09. "What's your designation?"_

"_A3-17," said the hunter. He took a couple of slow steps toward her with the collar held down at his side, open and half-hidden by a fold of his coat. B2-09 was looking at his face._

"_A3-17," she said slowly. "You know what the mercs did to me, after they caught me?"_

"_Yes," he said. There was no reason to lie._

"_Charon and Xen saved me," said Bell. She raised her hands to her face. Her shoulders jerked once, but there were no tears. A B2 unit would have no way to produce them. A3-17 was capable of tears, but he had never cried that he was able to remember._

"_I'm glad," said the hunter, with complete honesty. The hands were awkward, but he was confident that he could reach around them. He took two swift, silent steps and raised the collar, preparing to snap it around her throat._

_It hit her open hand instead. Short, strong fingers tightened around the band of steel, and A3-17's frantic tug could not free it. Then she had the front of his shirt with her other hand, dragging him close to her so that she looked up into his face. She was not breathing hard. She had stopped making the attempt to simulate breathing at all._

"_They saved me," she said. _

_The lights in both her eyes flared up suddenly and brightly._

"_And you killed them."_

_The hunter struggled fiercely, both of his hands on the one that held him as she began to lift him off the ground. He knew what was coming next. It was not even a surprise when the collar closed around his neck._

_Then it stopped, just short of the catch clicking._

"_I wanted you to know I could do it," said B2-09. "But I'm not that cruel. I'm not going to send you back." _

_She dropped the collar and turned to slam his body into the wall, once, twice, three times. The breath left his lungs with an _oof. _He jerked a knee up into her belly, with no more effect than if he'd hit a padded wall. The CAU simply ignored it._

"_Xen asked me once what it would take to kill an A3," B2-09 said. "I never thought I'd be able to get my hands on you, you see. I didn't reckon on Charon and Xen doing so well." She tore away the front of his shirt as if it were made of paper. "So I've been thinking about it, A3-17. I can't choke you to death. But you need your circulation, don't you? You have to get blood to your organics. And that means you can't live without your heart."_

_The hunter did not scream as her fingers dug into his chest. It was the greatest act of will he ever accomplished in his short life._

_---_

Xen lay on her side at the bottom of the pit, gasping for breath. Agony spread from the middle of her chest and out to the ends of her fingers. Runners of fire even fingered up into her jaw. She had fallen the last few feet. She wasn't sure whether she'd hit her head or not. If it hurt, it was so much less than the pain in her chest that she could not detect it.

She turned her head, not for the first time. What was left of Changeling sat on the floor a few feet to her left. Plasma had melted the center of the packbot's teacup chassis to slag. All three arms lay bent awkwardly around the downcurved heat shield. Every trace of heat had faded from the mechanism, giving Xen not the slightest hope.

_Dead. My fault._

A yard or so beyond the robot's corpse lay the cargo net. It was half-obscured from Xen's view by the pedestal in the middle of the pit, but she could see that it was tied around its contents so that it formed a neat bundle. She had a very clear view of the single steel probe that lay on the floor beside it.

There was something, something important she should be doing. She could hear voices from above, but there was too much concrete for her to read heat signatures through the walls of the shaft. Bell was speaking, and a man's voice that she had never heard...

Footsteps. Someone was climbing down the ladder. Xen curled up tighter as another paroxysm hit, white spots half-blotting out her vision. The sound of heavy boots went past her with measured tread. As her vision cleared, her eyes traveled up to a pair of big shoulders and a very familiar heat signature. Charon was turned away from her. She couldn't see his face.

_Five degrees above normal. Why doesn't he hurry? Is it too late? _Something else was wrong. She heard the gurgle and hiss as he breathed, and there was a hot spot in his heat profile on the right side of his chest.

_Plasma rifle, _she thought, and whimpered through her gritted teeth. _No. No. No._

Charon went straight to the bundle and picked up the probe from the floor. Xen watched as he went to tip the dead Changeling onto her side. He sank to one knee – slowly, carefully – and jabbed at the button on the underside of the heat shield.

The dead chassis creaked and hissed. Xen watched as an epi pen spun toward her across the floor. Well, _that _was no good. Epinephrine was almost certainly what had caused the infarction she was currently having. It wasn't as if Changeling hadn't warned her.

Xen listened to the clink of stimpaks as Charon gathered them up. He straightened up slowly, as if it were difficult, and turned to walk back to her. She had an excellent view of the scorched wound in his chest as he knelt heavily beside her. His leather armor had scorched away first of all, showing the raw muscle around the hole. It was bigger than her fist, black at the rim and red at the center. Tiny red bubbles formed at the edges as he exhaled.

"I'm sorry," Xen said.

Charon rolled her onto her back – not very gently, she almost bit through her own lip – and arranged five stims in one large fist. Xen watched as he poised it above her sternum.

"I'm not," Charon said, and struck.

She was awakened by a voice. The diction was familiar, clipped and clear.

"_Well, I suppose that will be all." _She heard a gurgling cough, and then another voice said,

"_Yeah. I hope Bell gets dat bastard." _There was another interval in which the speaker seemed to have trouble breathing. "_Ya kept da contrack, anyhow. Looks like d'kid's gonna make it."_

Xen opened both sets of lids as she rolled onto her side. Empty stimpaks slid off her chest. Charon sat with his back to the wall of the pit nearby, shoulders heaving with each breath. No air seemed to be escaping from the chest wound now, though it looked exactly the same. His body temperature had fallen to just a hair above normal. His face showed no more expression than usual. The rheumy eyes might be a little more tired than she remembered.

Most alarmingly, he had taken off the shotgun harness. It lay on the ground beside him.

"Charon!" She crossed the few feet between them in an awkward half-crawl. "Where are the rest of the stims?"

Charon let his head fall to one side slightly so that he could look at her.

"I used dem," he said.

"What, _all _of them?" Xen looked around frantically. There were epi pens scattered around Changeling's chassis. There were also two more stimpaks. Both were broken. Their contents had already pooled and evaporated. "What about the ones you were saving?"

Charon lifted his left shoulder minimally. "Used dem earlier."

"Damn it, Charon." She bit her knuckle. "Heart attack from epinephrine overdose! That should've taken two stimpaks, maximum. Maybe three if there was bad damage to the myocardium. And even then, I'd probably live until we could get more."

"You didn't say dat before," said Charon. He made the gurgling noise again.

"I didn't realize five was all you _had._" Xen said. She slumped down facing him, leg against his leg. "There's no more air getting out. That means your lung has collapsed. There's air in your chest cavity. Without stims, you're going to die."

"I know," said Charon.

"All of this is my fault. If I hadn't brought us here - "

"He'd'a caught us somewhere else," said Charon. He had never interrupted her before. "Only one way dis could've been avoided."

"You mean if I'd never sent you to help Bell," Xen said.

"Yes." Once again, and despite his injury, she received the impression that he was amused. "Are you sorry about dat?"

Xen looked the dying Ghoul in the eye. "No," she said miserably.

"Glad to hear it," said a voice from above. Xen looked up. Bell was lying flat on the floor, leaning over them. Her hands were dark with gore where they rested on the edge of the pit, and a long drizzle of red ran down the wall from one of them. A light shone brightly in the back of each dark eye.

"Bell! He hit Changeling's emergency button," Xen said. "Then he used all the stims on _me_."

"Of course he did," said Bell. She smiled slightly. "Glad to see you're both alive. I think I saw a first aid kit on the wall in the office space. Stay with him while I go get it."

"What about the android?" Xen said.

"Forget him," said Bell, and vanished. Xen heard her running away.


	37. Chapter 37

_A/N: There _is_ a first aid kit with one or more stimpaks on the wall of a cubicle in the Power Station. I have screenshots. The bit about flutter valves is for real. I heard it in my EMT classes back before I found out I was very bad at navigation in a vehicle._

_I've also corrected a reference in the last chapter to Changeling having "four" arms instead of the three I established back at the beginning of the story._

Chapter 37

Xen stayed where she was, legs drawn up to her chest as she looked at Charon. He looked back calmly, but he made no attempt to move. The earlier flare in his temperature had been on her account. The probability of his own death apparently caused him no such anxiety. Xen felt a new agony of guilt with that realization.

"She'll be back soon," she said. "I'm sure she will. People can live for _hours _with pneumothorax if they don't go into shock. And you're not in shock. I can tell. Your core temperature is fine." She chewed on a knuckle, staring at the charred hole in Charon's chest. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

Charon coughed wetly. The voice of sharper diction said,

"Charon's reactions to medical trauma are," he paused to take a labored breath. "Are idiosyncratic."

"He's been shot before?" asked Xen.

"From time to time," said the voice.

"I'm surprised you're talking to me," Xen said, intrigued despite herself. "Last time it was sort of an emergency. And I've never heard from the other one."

Charon lifted his left shoulder briefly. It was in his own voice that he said,

"He only talks to us." There was a thoughtful pause. Charon wheezed, an unexpected and unwelcome sound. "And people I'm going t'kill. Dat is his job."

"Because he's a killer," Xen said. Charon nodded once. "And the other one is a tactician. What does that make you?"

"Just Charon," said the Ghoul.

"I'm sure Bell will be back any minute," Xen said. Her roving gaze fell on the remains of Changeling. "She left a probe out on purpose, didn't she?"

Charon nodded slightly.

"She knew she wasn't going to survive," Xen said. "And she knew you'd need something to hit the button with." She sighed. "You know, everything she ever did was for my own good, and I never liked her."

"You t'ink dat bothered her?" Charon asked.

Xen exhaled softly. "She couldn't even simulate emotion. She'd call it," she took a deep breath. "An inherent biologically-derived reasoning error. Wetware logic malfunction."

_I wish Tori and Bunni were here. _Inexplicably, she was aware of tears rising to her eyes. She blinked them away quickly. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," said Charon dryly. "'S hard t'breathe." And, while the pain must be excruciating, he showed no signs of incipient loss of consciousness. Stationary, seated and upright was probably about the best position for him, Xen supposed. "How about you?"

His previous ability to show concern had been limited to whether or not she was currently about to die. He was trying to offer her some comfort, she realized with a pang.

_That'll just make it worse if he _does _die. I wonder if he knows._

Xen made herself laugh, though it sounded more bitter than she wished. "I've got five stims in me. I've never been better." She bit her knuckle again. "Where can she possibly - "

"I'm back," said Bell's voice from above them. She vaulted over the railing at the edge of the pit and simply dropped the ten or so feet to the bottom. Her knees flexed slightly on impact, that was all. "I could only find two."

Xen stood up quickly. "Shall I do it?"

"Let me. I've got a good set of aid protocols, and now they know who's calling the shots," Bell said. "This is one of the things I was made for. Anyway, you're too shaky." Her hands were clean. Xen was torn between approval of the sanitary practice and irritation that she'd wasted precious time washing. Bell's already-ragged clothes had suffered from recent events. Now the shirt had a spatter of dark stains and a significant tear across the belly, and the pants were gone below the knee on one side. Her filthy sneakers looked to be coming apart at their stitches.

Bell knelt beside Charon. "You have to hold still, and this is going to hurt," she told him.

"Do it," he said.

Bell jabbed a stimpak as far as it would go into the wound. Charon made a noise that sounded like _gllkk_, but he didn't move. Bell depressed the plunger and extracted the empty. Xen knelt on Charon's other side and watched anxiously. The wound grew smaller, but the hole did not close. Charon did not regain his lost flesh. Xen saw a white tendon contract and release next to his temple.

"Good," Bell said. "Most people would pass out." She took a roll of tape and a piece of dusty paper out of her pocket.

"Charon isn't most people," Xen said. "What are you doing?"

"Making a flutter valve. I think I closed up the hole in his lung. For it to inflate, there's got to be a way for the air to get out of his chest cavity without getting back in. No point in closing the wound otherwise." As she spoke, Bell laid the paper over the hole and taped it down on three sides. Charon grunted approvingly.

The paper tented upward with a crackle, then sucked down against the hole as the Ghoul exhaled.

"See? It's working," Bell said to Xen. "The paper's dirty, but it's not as if Charon has to worry about infection."

"You mean because Ghouls are natively irradiated," Xen said, remembering something she had read. "Which kills germs." There was enough ambient light in the pit that she could not distinguish Charon's gamma aura from his general heat signature.

"Right," said Bell. She sat back on her heels and watched Charon brightly. Xen shifted into a sitting position. Her knees seemed watery all of a sudden.

"So he'll be all right," she said.

"Sure he will," said Bell. She cocked her head at Charon. "I don't think his contract says he can die."

"Thank you," Xen said. She opened her mouth to say something else and found herself without the words. Instead, she just said it again. "Thank you." To embrace Charon would hurt him, and for Bell would probably be just as bad in a different way. To let herself weep would be inexcusable. She sat in a state of limp blankness and looked at the two of them.

"Hey, take it easy," said Bell. "It's going to be okay. Could be a lot worse, in fact." She turned to look over her shoulder at the dead packbot, face gone suddenly serious. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"She never gave very good advice," Xen said. She looked at Charon, the hiring of whom Changeling had been firmly against. "And I didn't want her AI there in the first place. But she _was_ there when I needed her."

"Well, it's not like I really knew her," said Bell. "But it seemed like she always performed to spec. That's probably about all she wanted out of life."

"I guess it was," Xen said. She stood up as a thought occurred to her. "I've got to see if she ejected her memory. It was close to the bottom of the chassis. It might've survived."

"Can you rebuild her if it did?" Bell asked.

Xen shook her head. "No. It'll just be the data she collected. All of her experiences would've been fried when the plasma hit."

"So she really is dead, then," Bell said.

"I'm afraid so." Xen went and squatted next to the wreckage of the packbot, stepping over the ejected epi pens. She remembered when she'd build the SID into the chassis. It wasn't much bigger than a pack of playing cards, so it might have slid away under something...

She found it in the shadow of a crooked leg joint. Xen pulled it out gingerly and held up the steel box with its connector recesses on each end. It seemed to be undamaged. She tucked it into the pocket of her jeans as she stood up.

"She took my original packbot AI with her when she died, so Camel's dead too," she said, completing an earlier thought. "I've got a backup of that one at home, though."

"Is that where we'll go next?" Bell asked.

Xen blinked. "I... I guess we might as well. I found the xeno rounds I was looking for, and I need the Lab to really study them." She felt the cold weight of guilt once again. "And I don't want to get us into any more trouble." She looked at Bell. "You're welcome to come no matter what, but do you think they'll send another android after you?"

Bell smiled. It was not a humorous expression.

"Remember how much I said it cost to build me?" she asked.

"Yes," said Xen.

"It cost a lot more to build an android who could pass for human. They'd be better off to cut their losses." The smile vanished. "And I'm done glitching. If they send another one, I can kill him."

"Damn straight," said Charon. Bell smiled at him. He looked back without apparent expression, but something seemed to pass between them, red eyes and black.

"So the one who came after us is dead?" Xen asked. She had assumed this, but she wanted to hear it said.

"Very." Bell changed position slightly, kneeling on one knee as she leaned her forearms on it. "I was in bad shape there at the end – I forgot about the emergency button, even, and it's not supposed to be technically possible for me to forget things by accident. I was sure you were both dead. He thought the emotional fallout would paralyze me. Instead, it was all I needed for my positronics to run the subroutines under. I'm in control of my background processing now. But damn, I'm glad you're both okay."

"So am I," Xen said. She looked back at Charon. "How do we know when his lung has reinflated?"

"I can distinguish individual lung sounds if I'm close enough," Bell said. "How you feeling, Charon?"

"Better," Charon said. There was no cough or gurgle to interrupt his speech. He turned to look thoughtfully at the shotgun in its holster, which Xen took to be a very hopeful sign.

"Okay," said Bell. "Stay still for a minute. I think I'll be okay with this."

Charon nodded. Bell laid one hand on his leg as she leaned forward to hold her ear next to his chest. She stayed that way for a moment while he breathed, her black hair not quite brushing his skinless lips. "There it is," she said with some satisfaction, and took out the other stimpak as she scooted back. "Good thing, too. I can manually inflate a lung, but it wouldn't be fun for you _or _me." Bell pulled the flutter valve off and injected the stimpak with one smooth movement. The hole closed instantly.

Charon took a deep breath as the parchment-dry flesh crept back over his face. Then he reached for the shotgun, strapped it back on as best he could given the state the straps were in, and stood up. Bell stood with him, tossing aside the empty stim.

"I'd better get all the epi pens," Xen said.

"I'll carry them," Bell said. She began collecting up the little white plastic tubes. "I can give you one if you end up needing it. Charon can carry some as a backup." She looked thoughtfully at the cargo net. "How much of that stuff do you need?"

Xen was aware that she was blushing gray again. "Well, all of it, really. Charon and I will still need to eat, and there's the bottled water, and I really do need my tools. And there are the samples from the crash site. They're in the knapsack with my other clothes. I could carry that."

Bell snorted. "Well, the exercise will probably do you good, but those won't add much weight. Make sure you get your blaster, though." Xen scurried to pick up the alien blaster and eject the cylinder. It was about a third empty. The glowing blue fluid inside sloshed to and fro as she held it up.

"Three shots to a load," she said. "That's terrible. And one shot didn't even kill the A3."

"It might kill a man, though," Bell said. "An A3 will pass for human in most medical scans, but they don't exactly have a human nervous system. The synapses are different."

"That's good to know," Xen said.

"You were doing well to hit him in the first place," said Bell.

Xen shrugged. "I wouldn't like to try it again." She took the knapsack from Bell's outstretched hand and tucked the blaster and the cylinder inside it. The .22 still rested in its holster on her hip. She had never even unsnapped the button on the thong that held it there.

"All right," said Bell. She tied the cargo net shut and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Charon tucked away one last epi somewhere in his armor. "Ready?"

"Ready," said Xen. "But I'm stopping to wash up first chance we get." Her clothes were still unpleasantly damp with sweat.

"Fine with me," said Bell. "I think I saw another way out of here. Shall we try that?"

"Charon?" said Xen.

"I will go first," said Charon, and started up the ladder.


	38. Chapter 38

_A/N: I hesitated for a long time about whether or not to write the following scene. At least don't hate me until we've got through chapter 39._

Chapter 38

A little while later, Xen followed Charon up a ladder and into weak starlight.

"It's still night," she said as she looked around. Buildings hunkered in the distance. In every other direction was the same brushy, rocky plain that made up most of the Capital Wasteland. Only a little green now showed here and there.

"Well, we weren't down there that long," said Bell. "Probably not even two hours, _counting _when you stopped to clean up." Charon, now scanning their environment in an entirely bored way that brought a lump to Xen's throat, seemed to have no comment. He left the shotgun in its harness.

"It seems like longer," Xen said to Bell. It was a tremendous relief to be at least _mostly _clean, even if she'd had to do it at the sink in a sad little kitchenette they'd found on the way out. "Is that Old Olney over there?"

"Has to be," said Bell. "Looks like a lot of the power station was underground."

"It must have been," Xen said. She looked around, feeling suddenly helpless. Asking information of Changeling had been like reading it off a screen. There was no real _interaction _to it. "Do you know which way is South?"

"That way," Bell said, pointing.

"All right," Xen said. "Let's go."

"We probably shouldn't go too far tonight," Bell said as they started off. "You'll both have to take it slow for a couple of days. At least until we know Charon doesn't have any emboli that the stimpak didn't get."

"Any what?" Xen said, feeling the ground start to slide under her feet. "No, don't answer that, I know what an embolism is. Is it very likely?"

"Not very," said Bell. "The stim probably took care of anything like that. With an injury that severe, though, I don't mind telling you I'll be happy if we run into more stims or a radiation source soon."

"Insufficent data error_,_" Xen said. "I mean, when you say _not very - "_

"I calc'd the probability at between one and five percent," said Bell. She shrugged apologetically. "Can't be more exact than that without better imaging than I've got. I can't see through bodies except thermally."

"Can you figure out where we are versus the ship crash site?" Xen asked. "Triangulate between that, where we are now and Old Olney?"

"Sure, if you want," Bell said. "That's going to take us out of our way, though. And you'd be smart not to go home by the exact route you took getting out here. Especially if we're hoping to pick up any stims on the way."

"I agree," said Charon.

"But if he does have an embolism, by the time there are symptoms we won't be able to save him," Xen said. "Not out here."

"That's right," Bell said, not mincing words.

"We don't have to take the same route home," Xen said. "I agree with that. But if we don't, we'll run into more things Charon has to kill. If something attacks us, and he starts spontaneously hemorrhaging - "

"Then I can probably take care of whatever-it-is," Bell said. "But I agree that we don't want that to happen."

Charon did not respond to this. He stood looking around them, entirely as if the discussion had nothing to do with him.

"Back to the crash site, then," Xen said.

"That way," said Bell, and pointed. Xen started off into the waning night with the other two close by.

For the next long while, she concentrated on walking, holding onto the straps of her knapsack. Her leg muscles burned. The stimpaks had healed her, but they couldn't give back the physical resources she'd burnt up tonight. She had drunk water, but the thought of eating still made her want to throw up. That was all right. As long as she was tired and sore and worried about Charon, she wouldn't have to think about anything else.

Dawn had come and gone when they reached the camp site they had used before. Bell unslung the bound net from her shoulder with no sign that the weight had bothered her. It was bright enough that Xen had to close her inner lids behind her goggles. She curled up among the tree roots with her blanket, using the knapsack as a pillow.

"Go sleep in the irradiated zone," she said to Charon. "Take some food with you."

"I will obey," said Charon, but he seemed to hesitate, looking at both of them.

"I'll watch her," Bell said. She dug a couple of packages out of the cargo net and held them out to him. "I don't sleep."

Charon took the packages and walked away into the trees. Xen shut her outer lids, pulled the blanket over her head, and waited for sleep.

Black thought ambushed her instead.

As if for the first time, she seemed to see herself from a distance. The Doctors had never meant for her to be born. And if they had, they'd never meant for her to survive; and their failure to carry through with that resolution had cost, in effect, both their lives.

The first time she'd met other humans after that, some of them had died, too. Masterson had been spared only as an accessory to her own survival.

The next new encounter after that had been Underworld. Only Ahzrukhal had died there, but that was where she'd acquired Charon, her own personal assassin. And oh, he had killed a _lot _of people in the process of preserving her. People, and more than people: Raiders, and mole rats, and super mutants, and yao guai, and mercenaries, and deathclaws. Because if you wanted to keep someone alive who was meant to be dead, whose very body and brain were meant to rest in a field station for all eternity, you had to make sacrifices. Lots of them.

To Xen's exhaustion-addled and chemically imbalanced mind, the A3 seemed to have appeared like an avenging angel, perhaps the only being who could have ended this endless slaughter. And, when it seemed Charon would not be able to stop him, there was Bell.

And with Bell there, Charon had nearly become a sacrifice himself.

_I left the Lab looking for my purpose, _Xen thought. _Well, now I know what it is. My purpose is to get other people killed._

_It has to stop._

She shook off the morbid near-hallucination, but that last thought lingered.

_It has to stop._

What, after all, was the point of going on? She had found what she set out to find, and it had brought her nothing. There was no neat label on her third contributor's ship saying _this is who you are and here is what you should do._ She had found nothing that could justify her existence as anything other than an unpleasant accident, an experiment left to run long past its point of termination. Her refusal to accept that had led them to Old Olney, to horrible danger for all of them and – for Changeling – to death.

_No. Charon was right about that, _Xen thought. _The A3 would have found us if we weren't in Old Olney. He could have found us anywhere. Bell said so._

Nonetheless, she could not shake off the feeling of added weight, of bleak, sustained heaviness.

_It has to stop._

It was no use saying the two bots needed her back at the Lab. They had probably started a clone already. Bunni would be depressed now that she was gone and Tori, whose very existence was defined by a need to fix things, would want to fix that, too. With a new baby to take care of, a Robobrain's memory wouldn't weigh on her too heavily. And Tori was incapable of any kind of melancholy at all.

Bell didn't need her any more, now that her programming had settled down. Bell, luckiest of all beings, probably wouldn't need anybody ever again. And without Xen, Charon's contract would default back to the person in nearest proximity, and he could hardly do better than Bell. There was nothing in the contract about whether or not its holder _needed _a bodyguard. There would be no more scrambling around in the dark waiting to be shot or stabbed, no more running ahead to try and kill things before they got a chance to kill Xen. She could arguably leave him safer than he had ever been in his life.

This seemed like such a perfect place for it all to end, here at the destination she'd planned for so long. Xen began to revolve ways and means. She would never be able to use the .22; Bell would stop her. She might manage to inflict some sort of injury on herself, and let her own fast-flowing blood work it out for her, but she had worked at avoiding that for so many years that the thought made her queasy.

There was the radiation. Down by the crash site, it was more than lethal. It would leave no marks and she wouldn't have to do anything, not a thing at all.

_Yes, that might work_.

And if it didn't, there were the goggles. It was full daylight now. She'd already gotten rid of Charon, and Bell, thank whatever God existed (Xen had serious doubts on this point), was susceptible to completely human means of persuasion.

This decided, Xen pulled down the blanket and stood up. Bell, sitting on the log Charon had dragged here not so long ago, looked at her curiously.

"I can't sleep," Xen said. "I'm going to go look at the crash site one more time."

"Okay," said Bell. "Here, let me find the Rad-X." She reached for the bundle and began to dig through it.

"Bell," Xen said. "Do you mind if I go by myself? Charon will have cleared out anything dangerous. I know it sounds odd, but I'd kind of like to say goodbye."

"But you might fall or something," Bell said.

"I'll call for help if that happens," Xen said. She smiled tiredly. "I do have _some _sense of self-preservation. And I may never get this chance again."

"Well, if you really want to," Bell said uncertainly. "But not for very long, okay?" She handed Xen a pill. "You want some water?"

"Please," said Xen. She accepted a water bottle, tossed back the pill, and hid it under her tongue as she took a swallow. She handed the bottle back to Bell and turned back toward the crash site.

"Be careful," said Bell behind her.

"Thank you, Bell," said Xen, though this necessitated transferring the pill to the space between her cheek and gum. She waited until she was out of sight of the camp to spit it out.

She knew when she reached the outer edge of the irradiated zone. Her skin tingled as if a breeze had blown across the tiny hairs. She wondered if it was normal to feel that, or if it was some part of the sad mixture of her genes. With her inner lids closed in the brightening sun, she could not see the purple tinge that gamma should lend to objects around her.


	39. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Xen reached the rim of the hollow without seeing any sign of Charon. The tingle on her skin was more pronounced, like the feet of a thousand ants, but she felt no sickness. Maybe that just took longer. She was afraid, a little, but it sank under the dull weight that pressed her down. She walked calmly down into the hollow to look at the ship one last time.

"Are you watching now?" she asked the quiet ship. "Will you remember this?"

No one answered.

_I guess I'll never know what he would have thought, _Xen told herself, looking at the broken cockpit and the empty silver suit where it lay discarded. She went and sat down beside it to wait.

Nothing happened for long minutes. Xen felt as if her senses were wrapped in cotton, muting the sounds around her and the brightness of the sun. Her skin still tingled, but she felt no nausea or headache. In fact, she felt no symptoms of radiation sickness at all. This would not do. If Bell came looking too early, she might be able to successfully apply the RadAway from Xen's knapsack, and then a chance like this one would not come again soon.

She opened her inner eyelids slowly. The light was uncomfortable, that was all. Then she reached for the strap of her goggles and pulled them firmly down, hardly aware of the scuffling noise behind her.

Everything went dark.

Xen became aware, after a puzzled moment, that she was still conscious. In fact, she was still sitting upright on the ground. The sudden cessation of light probably had more to do with the leathery surface currently pressed up against her face. She was tolerably sure, now that she came to consider it, that someone's left arm was wrapped around her head. She certainly recognized the pressure of four fingers and a thumb against her right temple, with a grip as hard as a bot's. A warm body bulked large behind her.

"I'm going to pull your goggles back up," said a crisp voice in her ear. "Please do not attempt to remove them again. Charon will be upset with me if I am forced to injure you."

Xen supposed the radiation poisoning might still kick in.

_Keep him talking._

"I won't try it," she said. She closed her eyes as the goggles were firmly, in fact a little roughly, dragged back up and into position. Then she blinked open her outer lids as Charon edged sideways. He looked at her as he knelt on one knee, sitting back on the other heel. It was Charon's body, anyway.

"Why did you do that?" she asked.

"You ordered Charon to prevent you from clearly suicidal actions," said the Tactician. He rested the sleeved left arm on his knee, watching her closely. "And to prevent you from removing your goggles in direct sunlight."

"But that was meant for when I wasn't in my right mind," Xen said. "Unresponsive to verbal stimuli, that was what I told him. And I'm talking to you now."

The Ghoul looked at her. He pursed his fleshless lips in a way that was almost prim.

"But he knows that," Xen guessed. The lead weight seemed to shift a little, the slab teetering across her shoulders as she tried to think. "He'd know contextually, because I gave Bell the slip on purpose. Which is why _you _stopped me, isn't it? He couldn't do it."

"I would rather you didn't expose him too bluntly to that reasoning," said the Tactician. "We're already experiencing some discomfort related to his early conditioning."

_Because he's about a hair away from violating the contract, _Xen realized, and clamped her lips shut before she said those dangerous words.

"Then why?" she asked. "Why can't you let me go?"

He evaded her again. "Why do you wish it?"

Xen looked away from him, back at the crashed recon craft. "All I've accomplished in my entire life was to get people hurt or killed." Now that the damage was done, she could say it without emotion. "I wasn't meant to live this long. I came here hoping to find a reason to keep on trying anyway. There isn't one."

"Curiosity has seemed a sufficient motivator for a large number of otherwise irrational decisions on your part," said the Tactician.

"It's not enough," Xen said. "Not when the body count keeps stacking up. And not when one of the bodies might be Charon."

"Let me offer another perspective," said the Tactician dryly. "We have gone to considerable personal trouble to prevent you, Xen, from dying. I would not care to see that effort wasted."

"It's happened before," Xen said. "You'll survive. You're not even showing a temperature change right now."

"My reactions are not always the same as Charon's," said the Tactician. "I'm afraid my colleague is more or less sitting on him at the moment. We considered that slightly more advanced communications were needed in the current situation." She heard him shift position beside her. "Xen, look at me."

It was not a voice that could be disobeyed. Xen turned her head. He sat with his knees bent and his arms folded atop them, looking at her directly. His eyes were open slightly wider than usual, the only obvious indicator that the speaker was not Charon.

"If you die, we'll suffer physically," said the Tactician. "That, as you say, will pass. But Charon will suffer in another way, and from that I am not sure he will recover. He has no mechanism for coping with grief. Neither I nor my colleague can do anything about that. We've been trying all his life."

"What about the other two employers that died?" Xen asked.

"They had not attempted to form any personal connection with him. It was not a problem."

"I didn't _attempt_ to do that, either," Xen said.

"You used Charon to fill a relational need," said the Tactician sternly. "That incurs certain responsibilities. You cannot abdicate them simply because you are tired, and going on is hard."

Xen opened her mouth to object to this. Then she shut it.

"Don't tell yourself you can free us by doing this," said the Tactician. "We will only be bound to someone else. That's what we are."

"Damn you," said Xen helplessly. "Even if you're right, it's too late."

He looked at her sharply. "Why?"

"I didn't take a Rad-X before I came down here," Xen said. "I faked it so Bell would think I did. I've been soaking up rads for almost an hour now."

"You have no symptoms of radiation poisoning," said the Tactician.

"Should I?" Xen said. She still felt too flattened to react. Hope was not a word that suggested itself to her.

"By this time, certainly. But I think you should leave the irradiated zone." He stood up easily and offered her his hand. Xen allowed herself to be pulled upright. They walked up the hill slowly. Xen, now paying at least some attention to her surroundings, was aware of a gradual upward trend in his body temperature as they went. She was not completely surprised when he reached down and hauled her up over one shoulder.

When they reached the treeline she said to his back,

"Charon? Is that you?"

"Yeah," said Charon. Xen breathed a small sigh of relief. She hadn't been quite sure what to say to the other one. She didn't try to speak again. He was walking very quickly now and it would have been difficult.

"What happened?" asked Bell as Charon stepped into the clearing. He set Xen upright on the packed dirt. Bell stood up and looked at them with her head slightly on one side. Xen was sure Charon's body temperature had not escaped her. He was still showing a degree above normal.

_He'll be sloughing any minute, I bet. My fault. _She accepted the familiar refrain tiredly, without much interest.

"It looks like I might be resistant to gamma radiation," said Xen. Charon was watching her closely, but he didn't seem about to jump in.

"Really? How do you figure?" Bell asked. She folded her arms as she looked at Xen. "You're showing a gamma aura consistent with lethal exposure. How'd you pick that up with Rad-X in your system?" There was an awkward pause. "You spat out the pill, didn't you."

"Yes," Xen said.

"That was stupid," Bell said.

Xen shrugged.

"And _I _was stupid. I fell for it. Why would you take a risk like that?" Bell asked. "Were you trying to - " She caught Charon's eye. "Oh," Bell said quietly. "She was, wasn't she?"

Charon nodded.

"I guess that explains Charon," Bell said. "What I don't get is why you would do that. Is it because of Changeling?"

"Not really," Xen said. "You know what we talked about before we went to Old Olney? The android problem?"

"You said it was a hybrid's problem, too," Bell said. "Want to sit down?"

Xen shrugged again and went to sit on the log. Bell sat down beside her.

"What happens to an android with no primary directives?" Xen asked Bell.

"You mean if they're not reprogrammed right away?" Bell asked.

Xen nodded.

"I've only seen that happen once," Bell said. "To one of the A2's. He came down with some minor malfunction, and they tried to reprogram him, and they screwed it up. Nobody knew he'd lost it all until he started crying." Bell sighed. "They were one of the first models to do that, you know. Working tear ducts."

"What did he do?" Xen asked.

"He broke into an armory. I heard he killed about ten people before the other A units cornered him. Then he shot himself in the head."

"I don't want to hurt anyone," Xen said.

"You don't think it will hurt Charon and me if you kill yourself?" Bell asked.

Xen looked at her dully. "Worse than it will hurt me to keep going?"

"That's a question none of us can answer," Bell said. "I think I know what Charon would say, though."

"It wasn't Charon who said it," Xen said. "But yes. He said I have a responsibility."

"Well, you do," Bell said. "_You _chose _him. _You can't just leave him. The Hell with how much it hurts, it isn't right."

Xen looked at her sideways. "And now you can tell right from wrong?"

Bell smiled. "Well. As well as a human can."

"That's probably not saying much," Xen said.

"I know."

"We won't let you," Charon said. Xen looked up at him. He seemed a little cooler. Perhaps a decision had been made.

"You can't stop me," Xen said.

"I can't," Charon said. A muscle twitched in his jaw. "But _we _can. Dat other one t'inks he can talk you out of it. I wouldn't try."

"At least give it a couple of days, get some distance between you and this," Bell said. "What's the harm in waiting?"

"All right," said Xen. "I'm too tired to argue about it."

Charon said something under his breath. Xen thought it was _still not gonna let her._


	40. Chapter 40

_A/N: Depression affects different people differently. Some people have nightmares. Some people stop having dreams that they remember at all. And some people, of course, have insomnia (although it's perfectly possible to have that and not be depressed, if I recall my college years correctly)._

Chapter 40

Xen never did show a single symptom of radiation poisoning. She slept little, and poorly, and that night they started Southwest.

"We won't hit Northwest Seneca Station," Bell said. "That's where you said you came up, right?" She was still cheerfully hauling the net bundle on her back, though she'd managed to arrange the net into a couple of rough straps. They would have dug painfully into the flesh of an ordinary person, but Xen supposed (with an old flicker of curiosity) that DCUVRAP wasn't subject to the same discomforts.

"Yes," said Xen.

"We'll probably find another station, though," Bell said. "And in the Wasteland, all roads lead to D.C. That's where _I _ended up first, anyway."

"That's good," Xen said, because some response of the sort seemed appropriate. "But I'm not sure how to get back to the Lab."

_I'm not sure I want to go back there, either. _She had an irrational feeling that if she were again to enter that small, sanitary world, everything in it would shatter, fragments drifting down like snowflakes – that everything she touched would ruin. _I just don't know where else to go, and we might as well go somewhere._

"Can you get back dere from Underworld?" Charon asked.

"Yes," Xen said. She remembered that route quite clearly. It had been ridiculously simple compared to the traveling they'd done after that.

"Den it will not be a problem," said Charon.

"Glad to hear it," said Bell.

They didn't talk much for the next while. Xen found it hard to walk as far or as fast as previously, partly from soreness and partly just because of the dragging weight. Her joints seemed to keep aching much longer than was reasonable.

_It has to stop, _she caught herself thinking once or twice. Then she would look up at Charon. Unfailingly, he would look down at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Then he would shake his head. She was becoming very familiar with that stubborn twitch in the bare muscle by his temple. It happened whenever he clenched his jaw.

He did slough over the next couple of days, shaking off patches of his skin as they went. Xen remembered clearly one particular one of those jaw-clenching moments when most of his right cheek slid off. It hit his pauldron with a papery sound and he shrugged it off. She felt shame then, and tried hard to be more cheerful. This had no effect whatsoever on Charon, but Bell chatted with her happily when she made the effort.

"Are you feeling any better about things?" Bell asked her at sunset on the third evening. Xen swallowed a last drink of water, washing down the taste of dried apples from her breakfast.

"Sort of," Xen said.

Bell appeared to consider this, frowning slightly. "That means _no, _doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Charon.

Xen glared at him. "It means I'm working on it." The small, hot prickle of annoyance was almost a relief. It was something to be felt, not the endless dragging blankness. Even that made her knapsack a little lighter.

Charon flicked one of his fingernails off into the brush. He did not appear about to comment further. They walked along an expanse of pitted concrete that had once been a highway. Weeds grew up through the asphalt, greener than anything Xen had ever seen. A few even had small flowers. They were closed up, waiting for the sun to rise again.

They walked on. Charon killed another pair of yao guai, and at Xen's insistence they went around a colony of mirelurks that occupied the shallowest ford of a murky stream. She then had to listen to Charon grumble to himself as he carried her across a deeper area.

"_Coulda got 'em, easy. _Those were not our orders. _Yeah, yeah. I'm startin' t'miss the damn Raiders."_

Bell strode easily through the current, holding the baggage up over her head.

"You can tell that other one we'll probably run into Raiders soon enough," Xen said as Charon set her on her feet on the other bank.

Charon grunted noncommittally. He brushed a last patch of skin off his right arm. It drifted off on the current.

"I don't think I've ever seen a live one," Bell said thoughtfully. "When I left D.C. before, it was with a bunch of other people. Everything left us alone."

"They stink," Xen said. "And they're cannibals. They tend to keep parts of people around for later." She made a small moue, more from fastidious distaste than horror. She had not had a nightmare since the crash site. Every day's sleep was a black stretch of unremembered oblivion.

"Eugh," said Bell. "I don't know how I'll do with that now."

"Me, neither," Xen said. "Good thing we've got Charon."

"He's certainly looking scary enough," Bell said. Charon's exposed muscle glistened dull, dark red beneath a few shreds of mesentery. Xen could see the individual bundles of fiber bunch and stretch as he moved.

"You shouldn't worry so much," Xen told him.

"The Hell wit' dat," said Charon, calmly but distinctly.

"Can't argue with that one," said Bell. "You want to fill your bottles here, Xen? I'm getting about twenty clicks off the water. And we're upstream of the mirelurks."

"I might as well," Xen said. "Rads kill germs."

_And they apparently can't kill me. Whereas germs can. And diarrheal illness is definitely _not _the way I want to go._

She stopped to dig out all the empty bottles from the bundle and her pack. Bell helped her fill them at the stream. Xen held one up to the light of the stars, observing the very faint purple glow of gamma. The water was only a little turbid.

_There was a time when I wouldn't dream of _washing _with this, let alone drinking it, _she thought. It seemed unimaginably long ago and far away.

"You know," Bell said, when they'd been walking for a while. "I think Charon might be mad at you." They proceeded down a long defile under the moon, walking to either side of a thin trickle that no doubt joined the larger stream they had left. Bushes sprang up on either side, but the bottom was sandy. Charon had not drawn the shotgun, so Xen supposed they were not about to be ambushed.

"Probably," Xen said. "He's got a right, I guess."

Charon, walking on her other side and surveying the surrounding brush and rocks, appeared not to hear this.

"Maybe you should apologize," Bell said.

"What good will that do?" Xen asked. "It'll look kind of stupid if I – if I change my mind later."

"I don't think that will be a problem," Bell said. "It's not like I'm going to fall for the same thing twice, and you can't just use a command override on _me_. Now that Changeling's gone, you obviously need an inorganic to keep an eye on you."

"It sounds to me like _you're _the one who owes Charon an apology, not me," Xen said dryly.

"Charon's job is to kill things that try to kill you. He knows that. I know that. Right, Charon?"

"Dat is correct," Charon said.

"So somebody else is needed to prevent anything else from killing you. Including you. You're clearly a two-person job."

"You're making me sound childish," Xen said. She was aware that she sounded sulky, which tended to confirm this rather than refute it.

"I wouldn't know. I haven't been around kids." Bell considered for a moment, walking easily along with the cargo net on her back. She had to stoop slightly to prevent the weight from unbalancing her. "Although I probably should apologize for letting you get away from me. Which I do, Charon. It won't happen again."

"Accepted," Charon said.

Xen frowned as she walked, tightening her long fingers on the straps of her knapsack. She found herself increasingly angry at this byplay and, being herself, was trying to figure out why.

The answer hit like a fist in her gut.

_Because it's a situation I'm not in control of._

Xen bit her lip, although even now she was careful not to draw blood.

"Damn it," she said to herself, quietly. Neither of the others seemed likely to reply.

_Servants and protectors. I made them and bought them for myself. Remember that thought? You let go of it pretty quickly, didn't you. The second it seemed like Changeling might be trying to set herself in charge of you, you shot her down hard and fast. But you thought Charon would never try it, didn't you? And Bell seemed too stuck in her own little Hell to contradict anyone about anything._

True, she'd felt horrid at the moment when she decided to end it all. But the important thing was that _she _had decided that. She had dismissed everyone else's right to argue against it, immediately and almost without question. And now that she was simply being told _you can't, _it infuriated her.

_How incredibly self-centered I am. And the fact that I can see myself clearly enough to know that doesn't change a single damned thing._

It just deprived her of easy targets. And that left her chasing herself in smaller and smaller circles again. Xen sighed deeply, letting her shoulders slump a little.

"Well, if anybody ever needed a keeper, I guess it's me," she said.

"That's right," Bell said encouragingly. "You just keep at it with the internal reprogramming. The damn subroutines will fall in sooner or later."

"Oh, shut up," said Xen.


	41. Chapter 41

_A/N: In Fallout 3 the route taken by these characters is not possible, because the mounds of rubble (easily scalable by a character with mid-level stats) have invisible collision walls set up to prevent climbing in over them. I know this is because D.C. is set up as a set of contiguous, separately loading cells, but I still feel this was cheating._

Chapter 41

It seemed years before they saw the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Contrary to Xen's expectations, few enemies materialized. Things that would not give Changeling a second glance apparently were intimidated by Bell. Mole rats and radscorpions ran away at the sight of them. Or possibly, Xen thought, it was only because there were now three bipeds instead of two bipeds and an obvious robot.

And then, one gray evening, they topped a rise and found themselves looking down at a great river. Concrete embankments had been raised on either side of it,and the gray water flowed sluggishly between them, almost opaque even after Project Purity. Its surface reflected the wavering pinpoints of the first few stars. There was no sign of life around them, but Xen saw the broken skyscrapers in the distance. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

_The first time I saw them, I was still too afraid of open sky to look at the view._

"There's the Potomac," said Bell unnecessarily.

"Now what?" Xen asked Charon.

"We need t'cut sout'east from t'banks to get to Chevy Chase," said Charon.

"Southeast," Xen said. "Well, we should be able to stay on this bank, then. That's good, because I don't see a way across. What's Chevy Chase?"

"I believe it to be t'nearest subway station," Charon said. He pointed to their left. "Dat way."

The air seemed warm and close as they walked, the day's absorbed heat radiating from the asphalt. After a mile or so, they began to encounter the shells of buildings, mostly just two- or three-story structures with no glass in the windows. As they moved along the banks the buildings seemed to crowd in closer. Eventually, they were left walking a thin strip of concrete along the embankment. The alleys were few and narrow. Xen thought it an excellent area to set up an ambush. Charon evidently agreed. He muttered softly to himself for the next mile and a half. She was not at all surprised when he whirled the shotgun off his back and said,

"Dis place is not safe."

"Not safe how?" Bell asked.

"Super mutants," said Charon.

"Stop for a minute," Xen said, before he could run on ahead. She stopped walking to listen. Sure enough, she could hear the tramp of giant boots in the distance. She was sure there was more than one. Possibly more than two. Involuntarily, she felt her pulse speed up, remembering the first time she had encountered super mutants. There were still too many buildings between them and the enemy for her to see the heat signatures. They were probably inside the gutted hulk of a department store a hundred yards or so down the road. From where Xen stood, it seemed about half-gone, so much of it would be open to the sky.

_Meaning the ceiling height isn't a problem for ten-foot creatures any more, and it offers some very nice firing positions._

Bell stood with her head to one side, looking thoughtful. "I make it three," she said. "One's carrying something really heavy."

"Minigun," grunted Charon. His voice shifted in pitch, down to a growl. "_And I know just what t'do widdat, too. C'mon, lemme at 'em._"

"They have a prisoner," Bell said. "I can hear him breathing."

"Xen," Charon said again.

"Last time there were only two, and no minigun, and you almost died," Xen pointed out ruthlessly. "If we retrace our steps - "

Charon shook his head. "We would have to cross t'river. Dere is no easy way to do dat." He looked at Bell. "Besides, dis time I have grenades."

Bell grinned at him. "Damn straight," she said. She looked back at Xen. "The big mutants are different enough from humans not to cause me any personal problems, if that's what you're worried about."

"That's still only two of you," Xen said.

"One of us is Charon," Bell pointed out.

Xen sighed. "Try not to kill the prisoner."

"Watch the bag," Bell said, and dropped the cargo net. She had to run to catch up to Charon, who had alreaady vanished, rapidly and silently, down an alley. Bell's sneakered feet were quite audible, although it seemed to Xen that she was a little more quiet than before. The sound retreated out of hearing quickly.

Xen dragged the cargo net out of the middle of the road with some difficulty. The sound it made seemed incredibly loud to her, making her pulse hammer in her throat, but the distant mutants seemed not to hear it.

_If one of them comes after me, I'm dead, _she thought. _I've only got a .22 this time, and I don't have Changeling to prime them with the laser for me. I'd have to hit one twice in the eyeball before it got to me. _She remembered vividly the sensation of being seized, nearly crushed to death, and bound with wire so tight that her hands bled. Xen was somewhat surprised to discover, as she crouched in the shadow of a doorway, that there were a number of ways she did not want to die.

There were occasional loud voices now, the mutants talking to each other. They didn't seem able to modulate the sound much. Or maybe they were slightly deaf. Who knew?

"...THINK I KNEW A WOMAN ONCE."

"ME TOO. OR MAYBE I _WAS _A WOMAN. AARGH, MY HEAD HURTS WHEN I TRY TO THINK ABOUT IT."

Xen shuddered. She had heard that super mutants were former humans. She had a good idea how they'd gotten from one state to the other, too.

"HEY! WHAT'S THAT?"

Xen winced at the deafening roar of rage, and then she heard the drawn-out staccato of a very large automatic weapon being fired.

_The minigun, _she thought. An explosion shook the ground under her, then another.

_Grenade. I hope that was Charon._ She couldn't picture the mutants handling explosives, but then, she couldn't picture them maintaining projectile weapons for any length of time, either. Maybe they were more intelligent than they seemed.

Xen held very still as a super mutant finally staggered out of the department store and onto the street. Bell seemed to be kneeling on one of its shoulders, pounding away at its skull with something. She looked tiny compared to the enormous biped. It was trying to swat her off, but encountering some trouble because the monstrous corded muscles in its shoulders prevented it from reaching. It turned in angry circles, screaming its frustration.

Whatever Bell was doing, it didn't seem to be working. She finally tossed aside whatever she had been holding, wrapped one arm most of the way around the mutant's head, and plunged the other arm up to the elbow in its eye socket. Its scream rose in pitch. It kept spinning and flailing for almost two minutes before the noise cut off. Bell somersaulted to the ground as the mutant's knees buckled. Xen felt the ground tremble again as it fell on its face.

Bell turned back toward the store. She took a couple of steps forward, then staggered back as the mini gun roared again. Bullets ripped into her body for a full two seconds before the sound cut off. Xen held her breath. The gynoid shook her head once, straightened up, and flung herself forward and out of Xen's view.

There was a pause.

"HEY! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" roared another mutant's voice.

The answering snarl was quite clear:

"Take dat, ya bastard."

The minigun started up again. After a minute or so, it cut off. Xen felt another small earthquake.

"Good riddance," said the Tactician's voice. Charon jogged out to the street, looking back toward Xen's position.

"Clear," he said.

Xen dragged the cargo net laboriously out into the broken road. Bell jogged back toward her. She shed a couple of small things that went _plink _as they hit the road. Charon turned and moved back out of sight.

"Are you all right?" Xen asked.

"Nothing serious," said Bell. "It'll take me a couple of minutes to push out all the shells. The DCUVRAP has already closed over some of them." Her clothes, not in the best of condition before, now additionally boasted a number of small, scorched holes. There were no apparent matching holes in her body. There was no blood. The effect was a little eerie. She had apparently taken time to wipe off her right arm. Xen chose not to look closely at her fingernails.

"He missed your head?" Xen said.

"Nah," Bell said. "But rounds from a minigun won't pierce coated titanium at _that _range. Not when they have to get through this stuff first, anyway." She prodded demonstratively at her own forehead. A flattened shell squeezed out of her left cheek, bounced off her breast, and hit the ground with a metallic noise.

"Good," Xen said. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, _I'm_ doing great. You'd better come along and see the prisoner, though," Bell said. "He's alive, but he didn't look too happy to see Charon and me."

"I can't imagine why," Xen said. Bell picked up the cargo net and carried it back down the street. Xen followed her.

The department store was mostly hollow, as Xen had thought. The front half was nearly gone, leaving the back half visible like the pictures of a doll house Xen had once seen. The lower story and part of the upper story were strewn with ammunition boxes, broken furniture, and mesh nets full of horrible things. Xen shook off the image of a great hand reaching for her and walked resolutely past the corpse of the mutant Bell had killed. Two more lay sprawled out on the mixed debris of the ground. One was full of small, bleeding holes. Xen edged over to look at the other one, the one who must have had the minigun before Charon got hold of it. She knew what to look for, so she wasn't surprised to see that the tendon in the back of its right knee had been cut. Its face had been cut several times, presumably culminating in the ugly ruin of its left eye.

_So that's what he was trying to do last time, _she thought, and looked around for Charon. He was going through the ammo boxes with swift, practiced hands. Xen smiled for the first time in a week. Then she remembered the prisoner.

"Bell, where is he?"

"Over there," Bell said, and pointed to a corner between two segments of broken wall. One of the awful mesh bags hung from a joist there, dripping. Nearby, crouched in its shadow, knelt a man. He was very thin, and bruises covered his naked upper body over his protruding ribs and clavicles. A shadow of black stubble clung to his jaw and his sharp cheekbones, and his hair was a wild, frizzy black cloud around his skull. His skin was almost gray. Xen guessed it had probably been darker before they'd caught him. He wore only a ragged and filthy pair of khaki pants. His hands were bound tightly behind him. Xen winced at a memory.

Xen squatted in front of him. She didn't want to kneel on the sticky ground.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

The man stared at her.

"You human?" he croaked.


	42. Chapter 42

_A/N: This is probably the third notice that this chapter is up for those of you subscribing. I wanted to make sure nobody missed it, and I apologize for any inconvenience. I hope I've explored relevant issues here in a way that works and makes sense. And thanks again for being positive and helpful with your criticism – I want to improve at the craft of writing whether it's in an original novel, a fanfic, or a blog entry, and you're helping me tremendously with that process. _

_Oh, and the anti-mutagen is not something I pulled out of my hat this chapter, for those who objected to that. Its origin and effects, which have nothing to do with the canonical modified FEV, are explored at length in TFW: Thistle (my only other Fallout 3 story).  
_

Chapter 42

"Yes," said Xen. It wasn't technically a lie, and she suspected the full correct answer was not a good idea. "I've just soaked up too many rads, is all." She ignored Bell's snicker behind her. It was too dark for the man to see her eyes clearly, so even with her goggles off and her black lids open, he wouldn't be bothered by her oddly-colored irises.

"What about that other one?" the man asked. He was staring past her at Bell.

"She's a lot stronger than I am," Xen said. "Do you want those things off your wrists, or not?"

"Hell, yes." The man staggered upright and turned around to present his bleeding hands. Bell unwound the wires carefully. She stepped back and tossed them aside as the man turned, rubbing his hands on his pants.

"Charon," Xen said as she stood up. "Did you find any stimpaks?"

"Yes," said Charon from behind her.

"Give me one," Xen said. She held out her hand. Nothing happened. She turned to glare at him. "Charon. I want this man to live, do you understand?"

He handed over a stim. Xen chose to ignore the stubborn set to his jaw.

"Do you want to do this, or are your fingers too numb?" she asked the man.

"Uh, you do it," he said. "God, I'm dying for a drink."

Xen stepped forward and injected the stim into the man's forearm. He watched her closely as she did it, but made no move to attack or flee.

"Charon," she said. "Did you find any water?"

"Dere is a working sink in t'back," he said.

"Can you get there on your own?" Xen asked the man.

"Oh, sure." He looked around a little dazedly. The wounds on his hands had dried up, and the bruises on his chest were fading rapidly. "Um, if that's okay. I guess your Ghoul friend won't want it." He looked warily past her. "Not if he's one of the old ones, anyway."

"What?" Xen said.

He stared at her. "Didn't you hear? It's been on the radio."

"I don't have one," Xen said.

"Where've you been, girl? Underground?" He looked at Xen's long fingers and her greenish complexion. "Don't answer that. Anyhow, the Brotherhood of Steel has been putting stuff in the water. Turns Ghouls back into normal people. The old ones don't want it 'cause it'll make them die younger. At least, that's what people were saying before these things caught me." He waved a hand at the dead super mutants. "Mutants can't drink the water without adding rads to it, or it kills them."

Xen looked at him blankly for a moment. Then she said, "Do you need food or anything?"

"No, I live close to here," the man said. "Thanks a lot. You mind if I - ?"

"Go ahead," Xen said. The man stumbled off toward the back of the building. Xen turned to look up at Charon. "You didn't drink anything here, did you?"

"No," Charon said.

Xen let out the breath she had been holding. "Good." She looked at him. "I mean – unless you wanted to..."

Though his facial expression did not overtly change, Charon grew subtly tenser. Xen watched small muscles draw up tight around his eyes.

"Is dat your wish?" Charon asked.

"Is it _my _wish?"

He hadn't asked _is that your order. _Xen stared at Charon's face. The band of muscle across his forehead shrank and pulled, knotting up in the center. In the dark his heat signature was the clearest thing about him, so the subtle shift upwards was not easy to miss. Then, in that moment, Xen experienced the closest thing to telepathy she had ever known.

_He knows. _Xen turned away from the other two, feeling her hands clench at her sides. Her face was hot with anger and embarrassment. _I didn't know myself, and he knew. _She had always been aware of Charon as a body, a large and male thing in her world of sexless robotic presence. Warm shoulder when he carried her; warm hands when he picked her up and set her down; and the feverish, radiating heat when he was feeling whatever strange and fractured form of emotional distress Charon could allow himself to feel.

She hadn't associated that with sex.

And why should she? She had no context for it.

"Xen? What is it?" Bell was asking behind her.

Xen shook her head. "I can't..."

Whatever maybe-menstrual, maybe-estrus, maybe-neither kind of cycle her body had set itself into, she had never been unable to ignore it. Once she was past thirteen or so, she had taught herself not to fantasize, except during those few and private moments when it would not interfere with what she had thought of as her real life. Certainly there was nothing about old Masterson, the only other living male of her long-term acquaintance to this point, that would remind her of it. But even so, she had never had any father or brothers in her life. Dr. Montalban was gone so soon, and she never had known her third contributor. All the bots had had female names, female voices.

And then there had been Charon. Charon was big, and dangerous, and sometimes frightening, but – most damaging – he was hers to command. Hadn't he told her so? There was and always had been something peculiarly fascinating about that suggestion of the mechanical wed to the unmistakably biological. The animate anatomy lesson that was his face, the one arm that he left exposed to view – the very moving cords of naked tendon that should shock and horrify an ordinary woman - those things would not let her forget how very organic, how very much a living thing he was.

Because Tori had been right about something. Xen needed to be around someone who was biologically alive. Someone who could remind her that wetware wasn't the malfunction in her, it was what she was designed to be. And Charon _was _the embodiment of her weakness. Every bad judgment she made would send him out as her destroying hand, or would show its marks of punishment on his impassive and unlovely face.

_My very own monster. _Xen moved her hands up to the straps of her knapsack, forcing the fingers to unclench.

He must see some of that. The Tactician certainly had. _You used Charon to fill a relational need, _that was what he had said_. _Did he suppose, then, that it was no more than pheremonal? That she was so mixed up in her seventeen-year-old mind that she had latched onto the only adult male in her immediate environment? Or that she had just responded to her proximity to him through all of this trauma with the wrong kind of bonding? That certainly seemed plausible enough. It would explain why he thought she would be so libidinously desperate that she would sacrifice his chance at immortality to make him ordinary, human and touchable, never mind that then he would still be forty years old and she would be seventeen.

_Damn, damn, damn._

"Xen?" Bell was saying.

"Charon thinks I want him to be human because I find him attractive," Xen said, stating things in the baldest way possible. She flexed her shoulders slightly, but couldn't budge the weight. "And he's afraid that I'd kill myself if he did it, because I wouldn't be happy with the result."

"Oh," Bell said. "Fuck. And I thought we were actually doing better."

Xen turned slowly to look at them again. Bell stood with her arms tightly folded, as if she were cold, but the light in her eyes was steady. She was looking from Charon to Xen with a small frown.

"How can I explain so that you'll understand?" Xen asked Charon. "How can I avoid the i/o error?"

"Then explain so that _I'll _understand, please," Bell said. "What's the interactional model? Isn't it sort of unusual for people who aren't Ghouls to, you know, _like _Ghouls?"

"I wouldn't know," Xen said. "I spent the first sixteen years of my life in a set of maybe five rooms with two robots. Robots with female voices, even. The Doctors died when I was four. Dr. Graber killed Dr. Montalban, and then Tori killed her. I haven't experienced much social disapproval."

"It doesn't bother you on a visceral level?" Bell asked. "Most humans find Ghouls to be, you know, corpselike."

Xen smiled sadly, not at Bell but at Charon. He looked back without expression, but his temperature was still above normal. "Maybe I'm a necrophile, then. Both my male genetic contributors have been floating preserved in field stations for most of my life, you know. And isn't how you relate to your father supposed to affect how you relate to other men? I'm sure that was in my psychology reading."

"Dunno. I don't have much in the way of psych files," Bell said.

"Anyway, it's probably more important that I don't have a niche for him," Xen said. "I've planned for him to be around for a long time, and I'm still trying to find a context for him. I wouldn't wish being my father on anyone – not with all _that _means to me - and I never had a brother or an uncle. So yes, I have sometimes thought about him as a man and myself as a woman. But that's part of the negotiation process, it's not a destination, do you understand? That part of it he has wrong."

She looked up at Charon. "And no matter what, I would never want you to die sooner if I could prevent it. Whether your Hayflick limit says you're getting old or not, there is no part of me that wants you to be dead in twenty years." She took a deep breath. "Even if I am. And I _do _understand that you probably couldn't see me as an adult even if you wanted to. You've got some processing problems of your own."

"Dat may be some'ting of an understatement," Charon said. Xen was relieved to hear him speak. "You must unnerstand, Xen. I cannot t'ink of anyone in t'way you describe. For me to explain to you why would..." he stopped, his jaw muscle working. "It would be difficult."

"Is this a conditioning problem?" Xen asked.

"Yes," Charon said, with evident difficulty.

"You get a bad headache when you try to talk about it," Xen guessed. Charon nodded once. "Then don't. I don't need to know the details to understand." She sighed. "And I don't need for you to be different from what you are. I'd be dead several times over if you were. I never forget that."

"Good," Bell said. "Because I don't think there _is _anybody who could do what Charon's been doing for you, not as well as he's been doing it. And if there was, you wouldn't be able to trust them."

"No, I wouldn't, would I?" Xen smiled. Charon's face had smoothed out again, and she thought his temperature was declining a little. "Charon, for what it's worth, I'm sorry I tried to kill myself. I apologize."

"Accepted," Charon said promptly. "Alt'ough I would greatly appreciate it if you did not try it again."

"I think I can safely promise you that I won't," Xen said. She looked around them. There was no sign of the man she had freed. "We just met someone who didn't get killed, did you notice? Maybe I've broken the chain."

That thought gave her some modicum of hope. The sensation was so unfamiliar that it almost hurt.


	43. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

It was not two days later that they reached the Mall. The noise of desultory gunfire could be heard a long way off, with the occasional ground-shaking report of a rocket exploding.

"I don't remember it being this loud last time," Xen said after one such noise. "Are the super mutants fighting someone?"

"Probably t'Brot'erhood of Steel," Charon said. To Xen's relief, he had begun to put on flesh again. There were erratic patches of leathery skin on his face and his visible arm, and a definite area of scar behind the new hole in his chest armor.

"I wonder if they really did put something in the water," Xen said.

"I noticed you've been sticking to the irradiated stuff," Bell said. "Are you worried it would do something to you?"

"I'm not sure," Xen said. "Odds are good this cure is some kind of enzyme delivered by a carrier virus. My cells have some human surface markers and some xenoorganic ones, where the markers on a Ghoul or a super mutant's cells would be all human. The virus might or might not be able to attach to them. If not, it wouldn't have an effect."

"But you think it might," Bell asked.

"I'm not willing to risk it," Xen said. "I'm thirty percent xeno, and enough of it is coding sequences to show some serious phenotypic markers." She wiggled the three fingers and thumb of one hand demonstratively. "My inner eyelids are the only things I know for sure are a mutation – they're neotenous - and I _definitely _need those."

"Maybe we should pick up a hot rock when we get the chance, then," Bell said. "Then we can irradiate our water whenever we get it. That'll kill the carrier organism, right?"

"Right," Xen said.

"Dere will probably be opportunity in Underworld," Charon said. "Dose who do not wish to be changed will have found a means to protect demselves from t'cure." He stopped some yards from the mouth of the alley. Past his shoulder, Xen saw a vertical slice of the Mall. The stretch of trenches and barbed wire did not seem different from the last time she had been here, except that there was more movement among the distant super mutants. "Please excuse me."

Xen waited beside Bell as Charon padded silently forward. He went down on one knee at the entrance to the alley, partly screened by a trash can. He stayed there for a long couple of minutes. With her inner lids open, Xen could see his silhouette in the infrared. She watched his head turn back and forth slowly as he made his unhurried assessment. Then he ghosted back to them.

"How's it look?" Xen asked.

"We are perhaps fifty yards from t'Museum," Charon said. "But dere are two BOS in powered armor pinned down on t'steps of Museum Station at the moment."

"Oh." Xen considered this. "So the area is under heavy fire, and even if we didn't get shot by the mutants, the two in armor might shoot us themselves. Would you agree with that, Charon?"

"I would," Charon said.

"Well, you're the expert. What's your recommend -" Xen broke off, twisting quickly away from the brilliant light that flashed past the alley mouth. Painful afterimages lingered on her retinae even with both sets of lids squeezed tight shut.

_Rocket. Has to be a rocket. _She covered her ears just in time to avoid being deafened by the explosion that occurred a moment later. There was another one after that, and another.

After perhaps five minutes, the noise died down.

"It's okay, it's over," said Bell's voice. Xen risked a peek. The gynoid was between her and the alley mouth now, the net bag on the ground beside her. "Charon went to look again."

The big Ghoul's returning footsteps made no sound. He had drawn no weapon.

"I believe t'problem has been solved," Charon said. "If we wait anot'er minute or so, t'mutants will be finished retrieving what is left of t'bodies. Dere is sufficient cover to hide us between here and t'steps, at least while it is dark."

"Ugh," Xen said. She felt a momentary sympathy for the two dead men.

"Better them than us," Bell said. She picked up the net bag and slung it over her right shoulder, leaving her left arm free. "We'll be less likely to attract attention if we don't run. How's your night vision, Charon?"

"Adequate for t'purpose," Charon said. "Follow me."

"Stay on my left when we get out there, Xen," Bell said as they crept down the alley. "There's a lot of lead flying out there still."

"Acknowledged," Xen said. "Charon, don't run off to shoot anything unless you absolutely have to."

"If dat is your order," said the Ghoul dryly. Charon paused for a moment beside the trash can, looking around one more time, and then he stepped lightly out onto the sidewalk and Xen scooted after him.

She didn't see much for that fifty yards. There was the sidewalk in front of her, and Charon's broad shoulders looming out of the dark, heat signature steady and reassuring. Bell and the looming bulk of the net bag prevented her from seeing much of what was going on to her right. The gynoid's infrared profile was just a degree or so below human-average. She could probably pass for a person with bad circulation. But then, humans couldn't normally see in the infrared, could they? Tori had hoped she would get to know some ordinary people, and she never had, had she...

Well, _ordinary _was probably a word that would not be easily susceptible of definition in this place and time. Xen smiled slightly at that, barely noticing the ricochet that struck sparks from a mailbox nearby.

Then they had reached the Museum, and she was moving up the sidewalk as quietly as she could, hugging the shadow of the adjoining building as she walked behind Charon. She glimpsed the familiar subway opening as she went, but there was no sign of Willow or, indeed, of anyone. Only a couple of horrid stains on the concrete steps suggested the fate of the two Brotherhood soldiers.

Charon reached the door, hauled it open, and stepped inside; his shove pushed it far enough back that Bell could catch it with her arm up over Xen's head. Xen hurried inside, and Bell came after her. The gynoid pulled the heavy door to behind them.

Xen looked around the dingy lobby. It seemed an age since she had been here. Charon stood beside the counter, looking without apparent interest down the barrel of a revolver held by a slender Ghoul in a leather jacket and jeans.

"Charon?" said the woman. "Is that you?" Half her face was completely healed now, pink and human. She had shaved her hair short, but it was growing back full and lustrous, not in patches.

Charon turned to look at Xen. She nodded quickly.

"Yes," said Charon. "Willow?"

"That's me. Hard to tell, isn't it?" She put the gun away slowly, gesturing at her face. "In another month I won't even be a Ghoul any more. I'll have to take off out of here long before then, of course. The old ones don't like Exes to hang around. That's what they're calling the ones who drink the water."

"So it's true," Xen said. Willow watched with a small frown of recognition as she came forward.

"You're the one who bought Charon's contract last time you were here, right? Yeah, it's true. Thistle and Fawkes and that weird little smoothskin they hang out with came through and warned everybody before it happened. Everybody forgot about what happened to Ahzrukhal pretty damn quick, believe me. Why _did _you kill him, anyway?" she asked Charon. "I thought you liked Ahz."

Charon just shook his head.

"Well, _I'm _not going to miss him," Willow said. "But I'd watch yourself if you do go in there. There's a new supplier for the drunks and the jet-heads now, but things got pretty crazy at the 9th Circle for a little while." She looked Bell up and down. "You an Ex?"

"Not me," Bell said. "I've always looked like this."

"You probably better not hang around," Willow said to Xen. "CPM gets higher in there every day. It's not healthy for smoothskins and, no offense, you don't look so good already."

"I just want to get Charon's Hayflick Limit tested," Xen said, although this had not occurred to her until the present moment. "Can anyone in there do that?"

"Sure, the Doc can," Willow said. "He jury-rigged up a kit not long after the shit hit the fan. Can't tell a regular life expectancy or anything, but he can say yes or no to whether your chromosomes are regenerating. That's why I took the cure. I'm not going to stay young forever."

"Thanks for the information," Xen said. She tried to think of something appropriate to say. "I hope things work out for you."

"Oh, usually they do," Willow said. "You just be careful. You seem kind of young to be out on your own."

"That's what I keep hearing," Xen said. She nodded to Willow and moved on toward the main lobby with its moldering mammoth and the great gray skull over the doors to Underworld. She pulled her goggles up as she went, remembering what she had done the last time she was here.

"Charon," Xen said as they approached the doors. She could see the many heat signatures up ahead, and this time the bloom of gamma was so strong she could see the violet glow right through the doors.

_They must have whole barrels of radioactive waste in there._

"Yes," said Charon.

"How likely is it that someone will take a shot at you while we're here?" Xen asked.

Charon appeared to consider this. "Somewhat likely," he said. "One or two of t'junkies will hold a grudge, if dey are still alive."

"And be crazy enough to try it?" said Xen.

"Possibly," Charon said.

Xen stopped, looking at the closed doors. She was tired. She felt the dull ache in her calves and thighs that said she would be sore tomorrow. It had been a long time since she'd had a hot meal, or a bath with hot water from a faucet. But those things were available at the Lab, and that was only a few more hours' walk; and she could see the rough outline of the Mister Gutsy unit on the other side of the doors, the soft little flares of its attitude jets.

"Tori can do a Hayflick test," Xen said. "Probably a better one than the doctor here. Let's just go on."

"Are you sure, Xen?" Bell asked. "I know I can do that, and I know Charon can, but you've been walking a long time today. Don't think Charon and I can't handle a couple of drug addicts."

"But then you might have to kill Cerberus," Xen said. "He's the only real security here. I don't know if I could deal with that right now. He looks too much like Tori. And besides, then these people would have no protection. I think they're probably going to need it."

"I agree," Charon said unexpectedly. "We can stop in t'subway if necessary."

"If that's what you want," Bell said. "I don't really have an opinion."

They trooped back out past Willow without another word. Charon nudged the front door open and peered out. After a moment he nodded. Xen followed him the few quick paces out and down the steps to the subway gate. The steps were tacky underfoot, and the stink of human mortality was awful, but it was too familiar now to cause her any real discomfort.

The flickering half-light of the subway was almost welcome. Xen pulled her goggles back down and looked around at Museum Station as they rounded the corner and saw the big open space ahead.

_The first time I came here, I couldn't go without them even in this much light, _she thought. _I'm not as sensitive as I was. _She blinked and squinted, but it was because her eyes were tired and it was dusty. Charon led them silently out and down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom and looked at her. She pointed at the appropriate tunnel mouth with its quiescent caterpillar of a train half-blocking the entrance. Charon nodded. Together, the three of them moved on into the dark.

_And just imagine how many people didn't die in Underworld tonight, _Xen said to herself. _I hope there are no Raiders between us and the Lab._


	44. Chapter 44

_A/N: It's never clear what powers androids in the game's lore (nor need it be; this isn't hard sci fi, like an Arthur C. Clarke novel or the Schlock Mercenary webcomic). It's stated that A3-21 and those like him "can" eat and digest, but not that they have to or need to. With the game's retro aesthetic, there aren't a lot of super-compact power sources on view except in weapons. My plan is to continue to be vague about it._

_Xen's statement about the amount of time that has passed since Project Purity tallies with the chronology from TFW: Thistle._

Chapter 44

"How far is it?" Bell whispered a few minutes later.

"About twenty miles from Underworld," Xen whispered back. They were in another stretch of tunnel very much like the last stretch of tunnel, but there were landmarks she recognized. They passed a set of four undamaged red lights in a row, and she knew an old generator still humming away in its alcove between the tracks.

"You'll never walk that far," Bell said, not unkindly. "I doubt you'll even be able to find your way. Let's stop somewhere. Charon and I will keep an eye out."

"I'll find it," Xen said. "It's not complicated. We just keep going 'til the tunnel is blocked and then go through the offices to the next one. Then it's ten more miles."

"Suit yourself," Bell said. "You should at least eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

Bell shrugged. Charon made no attempt to argue.

It was two or three more miles before Xen started to stumble. Bell helped her without comment. Charon ranged ahead periodically, scanning for threats. He came back with the knife in hand a couple of times, from encounters with mole rats or unusually aggressive radroaches, but there was nothing larger.

Xen stifled a yawn somewhere around five miles from Underworld. She felt she was slowing down – mostly because she could tell Bell was moving more slowly, to avoid outdistancing her – but she hated to stop when they were so close. The dark tunnel seemed bare and surreal, the stuff of dream or nightmare, not of any real physical threat. There was something she should be remembering about that...

"Oh," Xen said, and stopped. Bell stopped with her. Charon jogged back from the corner up ahead.

"Clear," he said.

"For now," Xen said. "It's possible we'll run into Stephanie or Michelle. That would explain why there's nothing big in here."

"Who or what are those?" Bell asked.

"Sentry bots," Xen said. "They'll obey my voice, but they'll try and kill you if they see you first. They're a cooler heat profile than a human." She waved a hand at the nearest wall. "Hard to see through concrete."

"It will not be a problem," Charon said.

"Are you sure? I don't want them hurt. We might need them later," Xen said.

"I am sure," Charon said patiently.

"All right."

They walked for perhaps another hour. It seemed much longer. Xen almost fell once. Bell caught her with stiff, warmish fingers around her upper arm.

"Sorry," Xen said.

"Not to worry," Bell said. "Just be careful. I don't want to bruise you."

"Me, neither," Xen said, and then the tunnel seemed to get darker all of a sudden.

She blinked her eyes open and found herself looking at a flat surface. A moment's squinting and frowning resolved this into a ceiling with a dead florescent light on it. There was something hard underneath her back and buttocks, and her legs were dangling.

"Damn it," she said. "I passed out, didn't I?"

Bell's oval face hovered into view. "Yep," said the gynoid cheerily. "I thought you probably would eventually. Low blood sugar plus exhaustion. Very predictable. You're just really stubborn, aren't you?"

"You have no idea," said Charon's voice. Xen sat up with a muffled groan. Her legs were, as she had anticipated, very stiff. Charon leaned against the wall beside a steel clamshell door that was currently closed. Xen was on top of a desk with her legs hanging off one side. Bell had lumped the net bag on the chair that went with it. It hung off either side, but she supposed it was cleaner than the floor.

"I think I recognize this place," Xen said. "We're about halfway."

"If you say so," said Bell. "I figure we came about five miles carrying you. I didn't want to go further in case of positional asphyxia. It's not healthy to carry a person across your shoulders for too long."

"I don't imagine it did anything for Charon's shoulder, either," Xen said. She looked apologetically at the Ghoul. He looked back almost without expression, but this time she caught the muscle twitch in the vicinity of his lips. It was far from being a smile, but it was probably the closest he'd ever come.

"I carried you," Bell said. "We thought it would be better if he had both hands free."

"You carried me _and _the bag?" Xen asked.

"Sure," Bell said. "_I _don't get muscle soreness. And even in the dark, I'm not likely to run out of power as long as the background radiation's at normal or higher. Besides, you're light. You going to eat something now?"

She handed Xen a package. Xen opened it without further argument.

"I'm sorry," Xen said. "That was inconsiderate of me."

"Not so much inconsiderate as dumb," Bell said. Her tone was impartial, even thoughtful. "Like I said, it's no trouble for me to carry you. We'd've been in trouble if we'd run into your sentry bots, though."

"You're right, of course," Xen said. She caught the Ghoul's minute lip-twitch again from the corner of her eye.

"Charon thinks you're funny," she said.

"I am?" Bell grinned hopefully at the big Ghoul.

Xen laughed a little herself, embarrassed but not unable to see the humor. "You weren't trying to tell me off, but that's what you were doing."

The smile vanished. "Oh. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, I earned it," Xen said dryly. "Which Charon also finds funny, I gather."

"Extremely," said Charon. Bell's mouth crimped up at one corner. In a human this might have produced a dimple, but evidently the structure of her face was wrong for that.

"So how long was I out?" Xen asked. She extracted a dried apple from the box and began to eat it. She was surprised to find she was quite hungry.

"Two and a half hours," Bell said. "It'll be dawn up top before too long, not that that's likely to make much difference down here. Want some water?"

"Please. Charon?"

"I have eaten," Charon said.

"Good." She accepted a bottle of slightly cloudy water from Bell. It tingled on her tongue, though not unpleasantly. "Mm. Rads. You know, the bots tried hard to keep me away from radiation when I was growing up," Xen said. "It wouldn't have occurred to them to test whether I was resistant to it. I mean, they could've exposed a tissue sample or something. But then, I could've done that, too, and I didn't." She swallowed again. "I wonder if they've started a clone yet."

"You'll know pretty soon," Bell said. "Either way, I'm sure they'll be glad to see you. An AI doesn't change its mind that easily. Not even mine."

"God help any other male-looking androids we run into, then," Xen said.

"I feel sorry for the poor bastards already," said Bell. Xen gathered that the profanity was merely for emphasis, not an indication of background error processing. "Want one of these little cake things? Charon seems to like them."

"I had no idea." Xen accepted a snack cake to go with her dried apples. "We have about a million of them in the Lab's storage, or we did. I don't think the Doctors liked them very much. They ate different things when they worked for the Enclave."

"In the Commonwealth, too," Bell said. "But then, they had their own water purifiers. Hydroponics."

"You mean they had fresh plants?" Xen asked.

"Yep," Bell said. "Some fish, too."

"Hm." Xen wondered fleetingly if it might be possible to set up a small tank in the lab, just for growing fresh vegetables. It would be difficult to get hold of the seeds. Five years after Project Purity, surely _someone _was growing produce again. If nothing else, it would be an excellent source of income for the first several people to do it.

_First things first. _She finished eating and slid off the desk, stifling another groan. _Ten miles to go._

The soreness faded a little as they moved down the stretch of track on the other side of the office space. The first time Xen had stepped out into a subway tunnel, everything had been new and strange and fascinating. Now it was just dull. But then, she'd been out under open sky for a long time, too. Her early agoraphobia was almost forgotten.

_For better or worse, I am not the same hybrid who left the Lab. I wonder if they'll be able to tell? _She couldn't say that she felt _different, _exactly. It was just that she couldn't quite remember who the person had been that had first come down this tunnel with Camel. It was someone she knew, perhaps a very close acquaintance, but she found it hard to see that person as herself. _And it's been less than a year. I'm sure of it. What will I be this time next year, if I'm still alive?_

That thought produced a strange conflict of feelings. On the one hand, the concept of another several months like the last few months was frightening and exhausting. She couldn't imagine choosing to do it voluntarily. But then she considered what she had brought away with her: Charon, and Bell, and the gun at her hip and the knowledge of how to use it; and the alien blaster snuggled down in her knapsack, waiting for her further study or just to shape itself once more to her hand. She hadn't grown much humbler. Hopefully she'd grown a little wiser, although recent events did not, she admitted, militate in favor of that hypothesis.

Well, she must have _some _kind of survival instinct. She'd bought Charon's contract, hadn't she? Maybe that would always be the best she could do, to keep someone around who would prevent her from being killed by her own stupidity.

_In which case, it's a good thing I know how to build more bots._

The miles seemed to pass slowly, though Xen was sure she walked faster than before. It was around the four mile mark that she saw the roach. Charon stopped ahead of her, but did not draw his shotgun, and then she heard the scuttling sound.

"Radroach?" she asked.

"No," said Charon. "Look."

Xen stepped up beside him and looked at the thing that now squatted in the middle of the broken concrete walk. It was shaped more or less like a radroach, with the right number of legs and the long and awkward wing cases; but it was obviously made of steel. It had far too many antennae and no eyes at all. She did not miss the tiny laser turret on top of what would, in an actual roach, be its head.

"How about that," Xen said. "You must be Roach 5 or 6. Respond voice click five."

The small bot clicked loudly, five times in a row.

"So they left in my command access," Xen said. "I guess they at least hoped I would come home. I built three of these, did I ever tell you that?" She said to Bell over her shoulder. "The third one mapped the way to Underworld for me. Proceed with function, Roach."

The small bot scuttled past them and vanished down the tunnel.

"Tori must've built it from looking at what's left of the others. Either they wanted to expand their map of the surrounding subway, or they're keeping an eye out for me," Xen said. "In which case I hope its onboard camera got a good capture. The voice recording will be relayed back, at least."

"So dey know we're coming," Charon said.

"Almost certainly. Keep an eye out for the sentry bots. I'm sure neither Tori nor Bunni expected me to come back with a large, armed male. They'll be less surprised by Bell. They know me and robots. Um, no offense, Bell."

"None taken," Bell said. "I'm okay with what I am."

They didn't encounter any sentries, however. The next six miles were tense, and slower than Xen would have liked, but they passed without incident. Then they rounded a bend in the tunnel and came to a familiar pile of debris.

It was higher than Xen remembered. The side tunnel was completely blocked off.


	45. Chapter 45

_A/N: 500 clicks is approximate for the Geiger reading around the crash site. 300-ish is the reading that favorite professor of mine I mentioned earlier got off a chunk of uranium ore through its glass container in a class demonstration. The chemistry department keeps it in a lead box normally, or did while I was there._

Chapter 45

"This is it," Xen said, staring up at the wall of dirt and gravel and slabs of concrete. It was too thick for her to read any heat signatures from the other side.

"How do we get in?" Bell asked.

"There used to be a gap at the top," Xen said. "I climbed over it to get out."

"Huh," said the gynoid. "Well, if you give me a few minutes I can probably dig through it." Charon stood scanning up and down the main tunnel, apparently ignoring them both.

"But then you might get shot on the other side," Xen said. "If anyone gets through there, I need to go first - "

She halted at a loud scraping noise from the other side of the mound.

"Sounds like the roach did have a camera," Bell said. "I'd move back if I were you. Whatever that is doesn't sound like it was built for digging."

Xen ran back to the main wall of the tunnel. The others followed her. She turned just in time to be knocked flat by a large body as the explosion shook the tunnel. Debris rained down around them as Charon crouched over her, supported by both knees and one elbow as he tried to protect his head with the other arm. She heard a grunt as a fist-sized chunk of concrete bounced off his upper back. She had lost sight of Bell.

The rain of junk only lasted a few seconds. Charon rose easily and offered her a hand up. Xen allowed herself to be pulled upright. Bell stood between them and the wall, the net bag on the ground behind her. She was holding a jagged piece of cement slightly larger than her own head.

"Now that could've left a mark," Bell said. "Whoever's in there, I don't think much of their concept of problem-solving."

"The sentries aren't very bright," Xen said apologetically. She had scraped her left palm a little. She wiped the bits of dirt and gravel off on her pants leg, leaving a black scrape mark but no actual bleeding.

_Going to leave a bruise, though. First things first._

She approached the wall of junk, which was now broken by a five-foot opening near the ceiling. "Recognize voice command and state ID," she called through her cupped hands. The sound echoed through the tunnel around her. "Anyone in there?"

"Voiceprint recognized," said a familiar flat voice from the other side. "Identification: Michelle. I have been instructed to convey the following: _Welcome home, Xen._"

"Thanks," Xen said around the lump in her throat. "I have one organic and one inorganic person with me. Prepare to accept new targeting parameters and pass them on to Stephanie and Tawnee. You'll see the inorganic first."

"Acknowledged."

"Bell?" Xen said.

"Right," said Bell. She dropped the chunk of cement, picked up the net, and started up the little hill. She was a little unbalanced by the additional weight, but she made it up without slipping very much. She squatted in the low opening for a moment, looking at what was on the other side.

"Gynoid unit added to targeting exceptions," said Michelle's voice. "Please state an identification for yourself."

"I'm B2-09," said Bell. "Call me Bell."

"B2-09 secondary ID Bell accepted. Voice print and IR signature logged."

"Follow me up," Xen said to Charon. He nodded. She turned to climb up. It was easier than she remembered, even with Bell helping her scramble the last couple of feet to the top.

_So at least I've gotten a little stronger._

Bell took the net bag and half-slid down the other side to the ground. She was not as graceful as the A3 unit had been; less, in fact, than Charon would be, Xen was sure. She narrowly missed Michelle, and then only because the sentry bot rolled aside at the last minute. Bell dusted herself off casually as Xen watched. She wasn't quite short enough to stand up in the opening, so she elected to squat also.

"Hi, Michelle," she said. "It's been a long time."

"It has been exactly ten months, two weeks, three days, and - "

"Yes, thank you. Where are Bunni and Tori?"

"Inside the Lab," said Michelle. "I have been instructed upon visual contact to relay video."

"Relay video - ?" Xen frowned at that as she made her way down, Charon close behind her. Why hadn't they come out to see her? She'd left them the ability to do that, hadn't she? She was sure she had.

Then she looked at Michelle, whose laser cannon was still powered up (the heat bloom was quite clear). Stephanie, identifiable only by the letter stenciled on her steel pauldron, sat a few yards away, similarly alert. Xen was not entirely surprised to see the Mark V laser turret's barrel tracking Charon from fifty yards away.

_And hello to you, Tawnee._

"Radiation-mutated human added to new targeting exceptions," Michelle said. "Please state an identification for yourself."

"Charon," he said.

"Charon accepted. Voice print and IR signature logged. Xen, I have been instructed to relay the following query: _Are these your friends?_"

"Yes," said Xen.

"Query: _Are you under duress?_"

"No," said Xen, startled. Then she saw the whole paranoid line of reasoning.

_I left with Changeling in Camel's chassis and nobody else, _she thought_. I came back without her and with a large, armed male and a gynoid they don't know, and there's a bruise on my left palm. I'll bet one or both of them calc'd a moderate probability that I was caught, tortured, halfway-stimmed and forced to lead someone back here to loot the lab._

"No, these really are my friends," she said. "I'm not a hostage and I'm not being coerced."

Michelle whirred for a moment. Xen watched the wavering pulse of radio travel from her chassis toward Tawnee and back. It had been so long since she'd seen one that she almost didn't recognize it.

"I have been instructed to relay: _Voice stress analysis indicates high probability of veracity," _said Michelle. "_Just checking, kiddo. We'll be right out._"

"It's not personal," Xen said to the others.

"You don't have to tell _me_ that," Bell said mildly. "_I'm _not organic. And I don't think Charon cares."

Xen started off at a fast walk toward the familiar clamshell door. She was a few yards away when it folded open. And there was Bunni, looking exactly as she had the day Xen left, except that the padding on her chassis was newer, made from what looked to Xen like chair cushions. The fabrics were a cheerful yellow gingham. The tape looked fresh. And the brain pulsed quickly behind its glass dome up on top.

"You put new pads on," Xen said.

"As soon as I knew you were coming, Dear," said Bunni, and rolled out onto the sidewalk with arms open. Never mind how jaded and disillusioned Xen had imagined herself to be. Never mind that she'd killed a super mutant, and survived losing Changeling, and found her third contributor's ship. She burst into tears and flung herself into the robot's lumpy embrace.

"There, there," said Bunni in her sweet, uninflected voice. She'd put some sort of crude gloves over her manipulators; they, too, were lumpy as she patted Xen's hair. "It's all right. You're home now."

Xen sniffled, leaning her forehead against Bunni's approximate chest. "I missed you," she whispered.

"I missed you, too, Xen."

"Out of the way, fatty," said another familiar voice. "I can't get out the door."

"As you can see, Tori has not changed," Bunni said. Xen pulled away so that she could roll away from the door. The familiar four-armed Mister Handy unit hovered out into the tunnel. Xen watched her train two oculars on Charon and Bell as she rotated to bring the third to bear on Xen.

Xen wiped her eyes quickly. "This is Charon and Bell," she said. "Charon and Bell, Bunni and Tori."

"Hi," said Bell. She smiled curiously at the two robots. Charon nodded minimally. He did not look very interested, but then, Charon never did.

"Big fella, isn't he? Fortunately, we've still got both bunks," Tori said. "He can have Dr. Montalban's. So where'd you come from with that designation, B2-09? Commonwealth somewhere?"

"The Institute," Bell said. "You?"

"Enclave, with Robco parts," Tori said. "Montalban wrote our AI's, though. He was a specialist."

"He must've been," Bell said. "You've got quite a set of personality files, don't you?"

"Everything but the mushy stuff," Tori said. "I leave that to the Robobrain, since she's actually got the wetware for it. Do you need a decon, Xen? You're reading ten clicks."

"No, I'm fine," Xen said. "I'm actually pretty rad-proof. Up to 500 clicks or so, anyway. Which turned out to be a good thing, with what the BOS has been up to lately."

"We heard about that," Bunni said. "We have a radio now. I was worried about you."

"Well, don't worry," Xen told her. "I'm fine."

"Find what you were looking for?" Tori asked.

"Yes and no," Xen said. "I found the ship, but it didn't tell me much. I brought back a weapon and some ammunition that I want to give more study. I'll copy you on Changeling's collected data once I get it uploaded."

"Changeling," Tori said. Xen could almost see the reasoning going on behind her chassis. "How long did it take you to catch her?"

"She talked too much to pass for Camel," Xen said. "I knew when I hired Charon in Underworld and she kept complaining about it."

"I told you to watch out for human men, and the first thing you did was hire a Ghoul bodyguard?" inquired Tori dryly.

"Wait until you see his contract," Xen said.

"Words on paper," Tori said. "To humans they don't mean a thing."

Xen looked steadily at the robot. Her eyes were dry now. "Do you see the hole in his armor there?"

"Yeah," said Tori. "Nice scar, too. Plasma rifle?"

"The same one that killed Changeling," Xen said. "I'd used an epi to boost my reflexes and given myself a heart attack. Charon had a hole in his chest and a punctured lung. He climbed down a ladder, hit the emergency button, and collected up all the stims. Then he used them on me. He would've died right there, if Bell hadn't found some more." She looked at Charon. He looked down at her without any more expression than usual. "And if I asked him to, he'd probably kill Stephanie and Michelle and Tawnee and come out without a scratch." She ignored Bell's snort. "I'm not sure I even trust _you _more than I do this Ghoul. Less, probably. Charon doesn't lie to me."

"Fair enough," said Tori, quite without any emotional reaction to this. "I take it you didn't get along well with the copy."

"Not at all," Xen said. "Don't expect me to thank you for uploading her without my permission. Especially when she gave uniformly bad advice for the whole time I knew her. She wasn't as adaptable as you are."

"She was a reduced version," Tori said unapologetically. "I'm sorry she turned out so bitchy, though."

Xen laughed involuntarily at this phrasing, her anger evaporating suddenly. She felt a little off-balance, as if she were walking a tightrope.

_She's just being Tori, _she reminded herself. The bot was no more capable of being sorry than she was of being angry. _That's what you get when you give human intelligence to someone who isn't capable of human emotion. And you wouldn't have made it past age 4 without Tori as well as Bunni. Don't forget that._

"You know, I think you're responsible for every gram of aggression I ever learned," Xen said dryly.

"I sure as Hell hope so," Tori said. "Anyhow, you're alive, so obviously I did something right."

"Un huh," Xen said. "Did you start a clone while I was gone?"

"Iwould have," Tori admitted instantly. "But Bunni wouldn't let me. After the first six months or so she got all depressed and mopey. I thought having a rug rat around would keep her busy."

"I was sure you would come back," said Bunni. "I didn't want you to think I didn't love you any more."

"Oh, Bunni." Xen hugged her again. "I'd never think that." This in complete defiance of the fact that she had feared that very thing, Xen realized. But then, that was the difference between herself and the robots.

_I can lie to myself and believe it. They need a command override for that._

"C'mon inside," Tori said. "It'll be a little crowded at first, but I'm sure we'll get used to it. I'll get a stim for that hand."

"Thanks," Xen said, and followed the two robots back inside and down the short hallway to the main Lab.


	46. Chapter 46

Chapter 46

"I hope your friends aren't claustrophobic, Dear," Bunni said. The equipment had not been moved much since Xen had left. The artificial womb still hulked in its corner, dark and empty, and the benches were smooth and clean.

"Not me," Bell said. "Are you, Charon?"

"No," said Charon.

"Would you like something to drink?" Bunni asked.

"If you have bottled water, one for me and one for Charon," Xen said. "We came through some dust."

"So I see," Bunni said. She trundled off into the back storage. "I'm sure you'll be pleased to learn that the shower is still working."

"_Very_," said Xen. "I haven't had a real shower in ages. And I've been out of shampoo for a long time now." She fingered her stringy hair ruefully.

"This is a nice place," Bell said. She was peering into a scope, careful not to touch it. "Where'd all the equipment come from?"

"I think the Doctors stole it from the Enclave when they left," Xen said. "That's sort of hinted at in their research notes, anyway. Originally, it took a whole Vertibird to carry everything. Dr. Montalban fiddled with the autopilot and sent it off to crash in the desert."

"Here you are," said Bunni. She handed a bottle to Xen and offered the other to Charon. He took it silently.

"Thanks," said Xen. She was halfway through a sip when Tori came bobbling back in and said,

"So are you sleeping with one of them?"

Xen choked. The robots waited patiently for her to resume normal respiration.

"I win fifty caps if you went lesbian," said Tori.

"No," Xen said, with as much dignity as she could muster. "I'm not sleeping with anyone. Nor am I a lesbian. As far as I know," she added honestly.

Bell laughed. "Glad to hear it. I'd hate to think you'd been suffering from a crush on me all this time."

"You're not my type," Xen said.

"Probably too short," Bell agreed.

"I'm not even going to ask where you got _that _from," Xen said. "Tori, can you test Charon's Hayflick limit? I want to know if he's one of the regenerators."

"_You _want to know?" Tori said. "Doesn't he?"

"It will not affect my contract," Charon said.

"Maybe not now," Xen said. "But he's supposed to be forty or so chronologically. if I die, his contract defaults to the nearest person. And I want to know if he'll be around to keep an eye on my clone if we _do _decide to produce one later. Charon's very good at what he does and he's absolutely trustworthy."

"Doesn't get excited easily, anyhow," said Tori. "That's good. I'll need Bunni to help me grab a couple of things from storage."

"Coming," said Bunni. "Is there anything else you require for the moment, Xen?"

"No, thank you," Xen said. "I'm just glad to be back."

"I'm glad, too," said Bunni, and wheeled off after Tori.

Xen took a deep breath as she looked at the other two.

"Well, we made it," she said. She leaned back against a countertop.

"Are we staying? I kind of like it here," Bell said. "Your friends are nice." She peered curiously into the artificial womb's main window.

"It's not exactly what I remember," Xen said slowly. "I guess I'm too different myself for that. But I would like to stay. At least for a little while. Is that all right with you, Charon?"

"I am yours t'command," said the Ghoul.

Xen looked up at him and smiled.

"I thought you might say that," she said.

THE END

A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed this now novel-length story! You've been a great bunch of readers and I hope to grab some of you for my next story as well. You may next hear from me over in Oblivion again.

Cheers.

SickleYield


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